


tonight, we run

by strangetowns



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Blood, Implied/Referenced Mental Health Issues, M/M, POV Alternating, Pining, Swearing, Violence, depictions of panic attacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-10-19 04:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20651510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: “What I want…” There was hesitation, now, in David’s voice. Not the kind of pause he took on purpose, to let things sink in or to dupe a Stormtrooper. This pause was a real one. “I don’t know. I want to go - somewhere. Anywhere that isn’t where we were.”Those words. They rang in Matteo’s ears, clear as a bell.The feeling of recognition reverberated throughout his entire body.“You’re running away from something,” he said.Something flickered across David’s face, something inscrutable. He turned his head and looked into Matteo’s eyes.“So are you,” David said, softly.“No,” Matteo said. “I’m just running.”-There's a war brewing in the galaxy. Matteo just wants to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. David isn't going to let him. Or: a Star Wars AU.[11/25/2019 - On hiatus. Seeherefor more details.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iriswests](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswests/gifts).

> Hello hi and welcome to the WIP that keeps spiraling out of Sarah's control AKA Matteo and David in SPACE. This fic is dedicated to the incredible [Ceecee](https://juilawicker.tumblr.com/), as I'd originally meant to have this ready for her birthday which was... two months ago lol. I love you dearly Ceecee! Sorry this is late but I hope you like it anyway!
> 
> I'm labeling this as a Star Wars AU but really it's more of a sci-fi/fantasy AU that borrows a couple concepts/worldbuilding from the franchise. Which means I've tried my very best to make this understandable to non-Star Wars fans [including a super ham intro that's supposed to emulate the [iconic opening text crawl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXDnFYu91vY) from the movies lol], but if you have any questions at all feel free to ask!
> 
> Also note that I do not have an update schedule for this. I don't even know if I'm going to finish it. But I'm really quite excited about what I've written for this AU so far, and I'm excited to share it with you guys. So I hope you're excited too! It's going to be one hell of a ride!!!
> 
> Thank you so, so much to [Lyds](https://boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com/) for being here for this fic from literally the very beginning. This AU would not be what it is without you. Thank you also to [Arin](https://arindwell.tumblr.com/) for being the best beta reader ever and [Alina](https://kapplebougher.tumblr.com/) for being the token-non-Star Wars-fan eyes on this fic. Title of this fic is from "[Corners of the Earth (feat. RY X)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOe09UlvKwY)" by ODESZA. Please note that tags will be updated as the fic goes on, and also that the chapter count is tentative and subject to change.

**PART I**

_A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY…_

_The Galactic Empire reigns supreme, ruling over its citizens with a cruel iron fist. For the last five years, a small yet tireless group of Rebels have been waging a secret and grueling war against the Imperial Army of Stormtroopers led by the ruthlessly evil Sith Lords. The Rebels are joined by the last-known surviving Jedi warrior who wields the power of the Force, an energy field that binds all life together, to fight for peace and freedom throughout the universe. The vast majority of the universe remains unaware of the war. But even the most remote corners of the universe will not be left untouched by the Rebel force, as Matteo Florenzi, a cargo pilot hiding on a nameless planet in the Outer Rim, will soon discover..._

The moment Matteo walked into Hans’ bar that night, he knew it was time to leave the planet.

He froze in the threshold. The smell of the room, the sharp sting of alcohol mingled with smoke and something bizarrely floral, washed over him - filled him with a warm sense of familiarity that sat strangely in the pit of his stomach. He knew how many tables Hans had put in this place, he realized. He knew how many people were going to be here, on this particular night, and how many of them would be regulars, and how many of them would be people he had never seen before. He even knew what jacket Hans would be wearing tonight, glittering and sparkling in the light.

And there he was standing behind the high rise of the bar, wearing that exact jacket, chatting merrily with patrons leaning their elbows on the rough-hewn stone. There was also the faint and distant warble of Hans’ favorite singer playing in the background, an undercurrent to the low buzz of conversation that filled the room. And the low-hanging chandelier in the center of the room, a gleaming monstrosity of transparent fiberglass and glowing lights that reflected a whole prism of clashing colors across the room’s walls. The _piece de resistance_ of the Neon Butterfly, as Hans liked to put it.

Matteo knew every inch of this place. He wasn’t sure how he’d let that happen.

Across the room, Hans finally seemed to notice him, his face bursting into a wide grin as he waved enthusiastically at Matteo. “Back again, Matteo?” he called out, voice cutting easily across the noise. “That’s almost every night this week, isn’t it? I’m beginning to think you actually like me.”

The words didn’t sink in so much as they hit him across the face.

At that moment someone jostled roughly into him from behind, making him stumble haplessly into the bar. His heart pounded wildly, a disproportionate response to what just happened, but he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop himself from feeling suddenly and horribly unmoored. Like his feet might leave the ground at any moment. He had to let muscle memory take over, let his legs and his arms move of their own accord until he had crossed the length of the bar and sat himself in his usual stool. Something inside him itched at the thought that he had a usual stool.

Hans slapped both his palms down on the counter. “So what’ll it be?” he said, although he had a knowing smile on his face that said he already had a good idea of what Matteo might answer.

Matteo opened his mouth to order what he always ordered here. And then he shut it, and ducked his head down.

“Just water,” he mumbled.

He imagined the look on Hans’ face in response to that. An eyebrow raise, maybe. Possibly even disappointment. He didn’t want to find out the truth, so he kept his eyes turned downward.

“Maybe tomorrow you’ll order something more exciting,” Hans sniffed. He grabbed a cup from below the counter and filled it to the brim with water before sliding it neatly in front of Matteo. Not a drop spilled over the edge. It was almost impressive. Hans really was good at his job.

Matteo shrugged. “Wouldn’t count on it.”

Hans crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, yeah?”

“I won’t be here tomorrow,” Matteo said. “I’m leaving.”

He had to marvel at how easily the words came out of his mouth. Not five minutes before, they weren’t even words that had existed inside his head. But now he’d said them, and that made them real.

He could feel Hans staring at him. “You’re joking.”

Matteo bent his head over his drink. “No,” he said. “Need to get off this stupid planet as soon as possible.”

“When the hell did you decide that?”

Matteo didn’t answer.

“So you do hate it here,” Hans said, half-wondering, half-pouting.

He didn’t. That was the problem.

Matteo didn’t know how to explain it, though. This itch inside of him. It had lived beneath his skin for as long as he could remember. So persistent, so pervasive some days he almost believed it to be an inextricable part of who he was. And he hardly had any words for any part of himself, let alone for one as hopelessly vast and indefinable as this. And so he smirked a smirk he didn’t feel, and said, “Guess I do.”

Hans rolled his eyes. “I have customers to attend to who are more important than _you_,” he said as he turned away.

The thing was, Matteo didn’t doubt that for a second.

He turned his attention back to the cup in front of him. It was simply shaped, no handles, no paint, no markings. Dents around the rim, like someone had shaped it with their own hands out of clay. It was just the sort of thing Hans liked, even if it might not seem like it from first glancing at him. It wasn’t flashy or flamboyant, but it was something that felt real. Like it would never be anything more than what it was. Matteo traced his thumb around the edge of it, slowly, almost in a trance. He counted the ridges he felt under his skin and marveled at the coolness of the water that lapped at the edge of the cup, nudging lightly against the pad of his finger.

It must be nice to be a thing that felt real.

“Excuse me,” a voice somewhere to his left said.

Matteo turned his head slowly, not quite certain if he was the one being addressed. Sure enough, though, there was a person standing at his elbow, turned toward him. He hadn’t made the voice up. Nor, evidently, had he made up the notion that this person might be talking to him specifically.

It was a human man, Matteo would assume from the timber of his soft-spoken voice. Matteo couldn’t see his face, so he couldn’t be totally sure about his guess. He was swathed from head to toe in black - dark dusty trench coat over a high-necked black shirt and heavy-duty boots, hands covered with leather gloves, scarf wrapped tightly over his mouth and big, reflective goggles over his eyes. The effect was honestly a little intimidating.

“Uh, yeah?” Matteo’s hand tightened around his cup.

The stranger tilted his head. “Are you a pilot?”

His voice was still soft and non-threatening, in stark contrast to the way he presented himself. It was a voice Matteo found himself almost wanting to trust. Which made him feel on the defensive. It wasn’t an instinct he could help. In fact, it had saved his life on more than one occasion.

“More or less,” he said.

“Have your own ship?”

Matteo tapped his fingers against the side of his cup. “Do you usually ask random people you just met so many questions?”

“Just one more question.” The stranger held up an index finger for emphasis. “Is that okay?”

Matteo shrugged. He should have shaken his head no. He should have walked out of the bar.

But the stranger had asked. And that did make a difference.

“Did you say you were leaving tomorrow?” the stranger said.

The other thing was, Matteo was almost positive at this point that he was speaking to another human. It was the sound of his voice, mostly. How precisely it shaped his words, how warm it sounded all at once. Matteo knew he shouldn’t make assumptions, not here of all places. But contradictions were the most human thing he could imagine. And that thought, more than anything else, put him more at ease than it should have.

“Maybe tonight, if I get bored.” Matteo gave the stranger another once-over, as if doing so might reveal some secret of his character he hadn’t found yet. It didn’t. “Why?”

The stranger pulled up a chair and sat in it. He leaned in toward Matteo, not so close that Matteo felt like his personal space was being invaded, but close enough that Matteo could hear every single word he said next with startling clarity.

“I need to get off this planet, too,” he said. “And I’m willing to pay for it.”

Matteo’s first instinct was to laugh, and so he did. “I’m not that kind of pilot.”

“What kind of pilot is that?” As if he genuinely wanted to hear Matteo’s answer.

“I’m not a fucking taxi driver,” Matteo said.

The stranger didn’t seem offended, although without being able to see his face it was impossible to really say. “So what kind of pilot are you, then?”

People didn’t usually ask him questions like that. Usually they didn’t ask him any questions at all, and if they did it never took them long to stop asking. So this was something new.

“Cargo,” Matteo said, looking into the stranger’s goggles.

Actually giving up answers was a new thing for him, too.

The stranger nodded. “Does that pay a lot?”

Matteo looked back down at his cup. Trying to find the stranger’s eyes within the depths of those impenetrable goggles - something to anchor his gaze - was proving to be rather pointless, and it was starting to disconcert him.

“I carry things, not people,” he said to his hands. “I don’t think I’m the right person for you.”

There was a beat of silence. For a moment Matteo let himself hope that the stranger had finally decided to leave him alone - was hope the right word? Did he know what hope felt like anymore? - but after a while he glanced over to the side, just for a moment, and the stranger was still there, his fingers steepled together in a gesture that almost seemed calculating, and the temporary feeling in his chest - whatever it was - dissipated like smoke.

“Let me put it this way,” the stranger said. “If I were you - that is, if I were a black market smuggler with a crippling amount of debt - and I was being offered double that money, and then some, just for providing room and board to one harmless stranger across a few galaxies... I’d be pretty smart to say yes to that, don’t you think?”

Matteo could only stare at him. “You’re bluffing.” But the words came out strangely, almost strangled-sounding. He felt exposed. He felt naked.

Because what the stranger said was the truth. That couldn’t be denied. And he had thought that no one on this planet knew it. To be proven wrong like this, by someone he had met not two minutes before - that turned his gut to shards of ice.

The stranger reached into the depths of his coat and pulled out a nondescript leather bag. He tossed it to Matteo, who by some miracle managed to catch it without dropping it. “Consider this the down payment, with the rest to come after the job is over.”

Matteo opened the bag and peered into it. He wasn’t sure how much was in there - math had never been his strong suit - but he was certain that right now, between the palms of his hands, he held more money than he had seen, let alone possessed, in years. Quite possibly in his entire life.

“I don’t know who you are,” Matteo said slowly, “but you’re definitely not harmless.”

The stranger threw his head back and laughed. It wasn’t a malicious laugh, nor was it mocking. It sounded - genuine. Like laughing really was something he wanted to do.

The sound of it was thoroughly disarming.

“I’m David.” He didn’t stick out his hand, just leaned back in his seat as if he belonged in this chair, in this bar. “And you?”

“Matteo.” David hadn’t offered his last name, so Matteo wouldn’t, either.

“Matteo,” David repeated, as if trying the name out for himself. It sounded different in his voice from what Matteo was used to hearing. Like it was being said for a reason.

Though what that reason might be, Matteo couldn’t even begin to guess.

He swallowed. “So where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere,” David said.

Matteo snorted. “No, really.”

“I mean it,” David said. “Take me anywhere.”

Matteo almost laughed again, just because it seemed like the thing to do in a situation as ludicrous as this. But there was something in David’s voice that gave him pause. From anyone else, those words would probably sound like a joke. Or madness. Or pure idiocy. Or maybe all of the above.

From David, though, the words sounded painfully serious. Like everything else he’d said tonight, Matteo realized. Almost -

Almost like -

Yearning.

“Fuck,” David said suddenly, and Matteo’s head snapped up. David’s head was turned so Matteo followed his gaze to the door, where a trio of Stormtroopers were standing.

Every nerve inside of Matteo’s body, every muscle and every sinew, froze at once. He hadn’t seen a Stormtrooper in a long time. Hadn’t wanted to, very desperately. And now they were here, and they were staring in his direction. Staring at him like they would never look away. The ghost of pain lanced through Matteo’s chest, and guilt, and shame; roiling, wordless, unexplainable. He was falling, and falling, and falling.

Something tightened around his wrist. He looked down - a gloved hand gripping his arm. David’s hand. He looked up at the Stormtroopers again. And he realized.

They weren’t looking at him. They were looking at David.

“Uh,” Matteo said stupidly. “Do you know them?”

“I think they might know me,” David said. The tone of his voice was casual and serene, as if he was commenting on the weather and not the fact that the white-clad imperial soldiers in front of them - Matteo’s pulse spiked in his veins to name them - would not look away from him.

One of them unhooked a pistol from their waist, and pointed it in David’s direction.

And then, things just -

Happened.

David tugged at Matteo’s wrist, pulled him down to the ground, and rolled the both of them under a table, limbs moving so fast they were a blur. There was the unmistakable sound of a firing pistol, then, and glass shattering, and screaming voices, and Hans yelling, “My bar!”

Matteo couldn’t breathe. His pulse was thundering in his veins, heat pounding in his temples. The floor was cool and hard under his palms and knees. Where was he? What was going on? His vision swam and trembled. He was trembling, too. He curled his shaking hands into fists and forced the air back into his lungs in a rattling gasp. His ribs were too tight, but there was nothing he could do about that. Not right now.

He turned his head. David was not losing his shit, like he was. He was on his stomach with his arms outstretched in front of him, and between his hands he was holding -

Matteo blinked.

A gun. He was holding a gun.

“Wait,” Matteo said. “Wait a second.”

For a heady moment, his voice, thick and heavy in his throat, didn’t even sound like his.

“Don’t know that we have a second,” David said, but he said it calmly, levelly, as if he wasn’t holding a lethal weapon in his hands, as if Stormtroopers weren’t shooting at them right now, the table sheltering them shaking violently against the onslaught.

Somehow, still, his words felt like something Matteo could hold onto.

“You’re not - ” His voice caught, lodging in his throat. He felt absurd, all of a sudden. What a stupid thing to think. What a stupid thing to ask.

David’s head turned toward Matteo. And Matteo still couldn’t see his eyes, could only see his own reflection in the lenses of his goggles. But he knew, somehow. He knew with utter certainty that David was looking at him, and him alone.

And he thought, this must be what it’s like to stand in the eye of a storm.

“What?” David asked. As if they had all the time in the world.

Matteo swallowed, hard.

“You won’t kill anyone, will you?”

It sounded even more stupid out loud. More than that, it sounded naive. It sounded like Matteo hadn’t seen murder happen before his eyes; like he hadn’t seen it countless times. Like he hadn’t seen much, much worse.

Which, of course, was not even remotely true.

And he’d just met David. He didn’t know a thing about him, except that his voice was nice to listen to, and inside his pocket he held more money than Matteo had ever let himself dream of.

But murder was an ugly thing. It was the ugliest thing he could possibly imagine. And he already knew he could not bear the thought that David might be capable of doing something that ugly.

He didn’t even really know why.

David rolled over so that he was lying on his back. He reached up with one hand and tugged off his goggles in one fluid motion. He looked at Matteo, looked straight at him.

He was human. Matteo was right; he’d been human this entire time.

And his eyes were brown.

“No,” David said. “I won’t.”

And then he kicked the table above them aside and aimed his gun at the ceiling, and fired.

Matteo watched as the great chandelier - the weight of it, the myriad of colors it possessed - fell to the floor with a deafening crash. Guns were firing at full force, now, laser beams landing around them so fast Matteo couldn’t keep up with any of it, but David was faster, his hand clenched around Matteo’s wrist as they crawled through the mayhem and toward the nearest window. David crashed the butt of his pistol into the glass and promptly threw them both through the gaping hole. His feet hit the ground running, and Matteo had no choice but to follow, his arm still in David’s vice-like grip. He turned his head. Two Stormtroopers had run out of the bar and were now running after them, shouting unintelligibly.

“Do you do this often?” Matteo gasped out.

“Do what often?” David’s thumb dug into Matteo’s wrist.

“Stage elaborate escapes from - fucking imperial soldiers?” Matteo could hardly speak. “Like - is this just your everyday life?”

David’s eyes crinkled at the corners. Almost as if he was smiling.

“No,” he said. “I guess today’s our lucky day.”

Matteo’s lungs felt impossibly tight in his chest.

“Here,” David said, then, and pulled Matteo sharply into an alleyway.

They kept running. There were twists and turns, occasional ducking through doors and hopping across rickety fences. Matteo quickly lost track of it all. He didn’t know this city that well, not as well as David seemed to. Somewhere along the way, Matteo realized he hadn’t looked back. He hadn’t felt the need to.

At last David slowed to a stop, chest heaving. He released Matteo’s wrist and slumped back against the wall, leaning his head back toward the sky. Matteo did, too, right next to him. It took all of his strength not to slide to the floor.

It was so quiet here.

“Fuck,” he said. “I’m never doing that again.”

David looked at him, and then he was laughing, that same bright and genuine laugh from before. Except now Matteo could see his eyes, the way they crinkled at the corners, the joy that burned inside them like twin flames. In the face of a sight like that, Matteo had to laugh, too. And his lungs burned like they never had before, and his body ached in places he didn’t know could ache.

But he was alive. He felt alive.

And these were both gifts David had given him, an almost total stranger. For better or for worse.

That wasn’t something he could easily ignore.

“We can leave here tonight,” Matteo said. “If you want.”

David reached up and tugged the scarf off his face.

As the dusty fabric fell from his mouth, Matteo jerked his head back - on an instinct; he hadn’t expected this, somehow - and the sun fell into his eyes. He blinked, heat seared across the back of his eyelids, and squinted. The world narrowed, spots of color dancing in the dark, and he blinked again. Focus, something inside his head whispered to him; focus on what was in front of him.

And so, for a moment - just for a moment - all he saw was David. David, smiling. Grinning so widely and so brightly Matteo was half convinced the image of it would be imprinted across the back of his eyelids, too.

And his whole chest kept burning.

-

For some reason it hadn’t occurred to Matteo that the loading bay where he kept his ship would be teeming with Stormtroopers, but it probably should have.

He and David were currently tucked inside an alleyway across from the loading bay’s entrance, and they were both trying their best to see inside of it. David had this look of intent focus in his eyes, his whole body almost entirely motionless. Matteo couldn’t begin to guess at what he was thinking. In an attempt to feel useful he started counting the Stormtroopers that passed by the doorway. It only took about twelve of them for him to give up.

“Fuck,” Matteo exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair. “How are we supposed to get out of here? My papers are expired.”

“And you were going to try to fly out of here without valid papers?” David said, raising his eyebrows.

Matteo pulled his sleeves over his hands, casting his eyes toward the ground. “Look, it’s not my fault every Stormtrooper on the planet is looking for you right now.”

“And you.”

Matteo’s head swiveled toward David. He was still staring straight ahead, eyes slightly narrowed now. The intensity of his gaze, no longer hidden by unwieldy goggles, was more than a little overwhelming. Matteo was almost glad it wasn’t directed at him. “What about me?”

“They’ll be looking for you, too,” David said.

Matteo’s stomach curdled. “What?”

“They saw me running away from the bar with you,” David said, horribly matter of fact about it. “It’s kind of hard to miss two guys crashing through a glass window.”

He felt cold, all of a sudden, and heavy. Like an invisible ocean was trying to drag him down. In an attempt to distract himself he bit at his thumb. He recognized the pain from his teeth digging into his skin, but vaguely, almost as if it were happening to someone else. “So what, then? There’s no escape for us? We’re stuck here forever?” There was an edge of hysteria seeping into his voice, and if he could hear it David must hear it, too. The panic was tightening around his chest again. He hated that he was starting to get used to it.

“I didn’t say that,” David said.

That didn’t exactly make Matteo feel any better. “If we have to fight our way through another hoard of Stormtroopers,” he said, “I am going to lose my damn mind.”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

He was being so cryptic it made Matteo want to scream. But of course he couldn’t. He bit down on his knuckles instead, squeezing his other hand into a tight fist. The pressure in his chest felt like it could burst at any second.

He could feel David looking at him. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to ignore the feeling of it.

“Are you okay?” David asked quietly. It was maddening, how gentle his words were. How legitimate his concern sounded.

The worst part was, Matteo almost wanted to believe in it.

He tilted his head back so that it thumped dully against the wall behind him. “Why can’t you fly yourself?” he mumbled. “Isn’t it kind of a dangerous idea to get a stranger like me involved?”

Dangerous for David, and dangerous for Matteo too. He couldn’t stop thinking about that. Couldn’t stop thinking about how it was too late to back out now. He had no choice but to stay.

Then again, he had the nagging feeling that even if he had the choice right now, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Because David _had_ offered him a choice, back in the bar. And Matteo had years of practice at fooling himself under his belt, but pretending that some part of him hadn’t already made up his mind from the moment David had asked him was too monumental a task even for him.

“I can’t,” David said.

Matteo could only stare at him. “Can’t what?”

“Can’t pilot,” David said.

This was not an answer that Matteo had expected. Not at all. A small part of him could hardly believe there was anything David couldn’t do.

“Oh,” he said, dumbly.

“And besides,” David said, “I trust you.”

He looked over at Matteo, and met his eyes. Something in his gaze softened, something Matteo had no explanation for. He had to admit it was hard not to believe him, under the full intensity of those warm brown eyes.

Just because he thought David was being honest, though, didn’t mean it was any easier to wrap his head around the words he’d just said. “Why?”

“I just do.” David pulled his goggles from around his neck and off his head. “Do you trust me?”

This was coming from the man who had dragged him through a firefight with imperial soldiers, and willingly destroyed half of Hans’ bar in the process. Who had far more money on his person than anyone on this backwater planet could even fathom. Who’d known a secret of Matteo’s he’d thought no one on this world or even in this galaxy knew. Matteo’s answer should be an emphatic no.

“I guess so,” was what came out of his mouth instead.

In a flash David’s goggles were around Matteo’s face, and the world went dark.

But not as dark as he expected.

“Okay,” David said. “Do you think you can sneak in while I distract the guards?”

“How’re you going to distract them without them trying to arrest you?” Matteo asked as he tugged his hood over his head.

“You’ll see,” David said. He tied his scarf around his head so that it covered one eye, as if it was a makeshift eyepatch. He tilted his head toward the entrance of the loading bay, and as he did so the sun caught at something under his nostrils. A glint of silver in the light. It was a septum piercing.

Matteo wondered how the hell he’d missed that before.

“Okay,” David said. He turned back to Matteo and gave him a little salute. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Matteo said, although he was almost certain David was the kind of person who didn’t need it.

David tucked his hands into his pockets and began to make his way toward the entrance of the loading bay. He stood out far less without his whole face hidden, Matteo had to admit, even with the eyepatch. Many of the people milling about had injuries of their own, patched up with far less expert bandages and coverings. And the way David was walking. Hands hidden away, shoulders slumped, face turned down but still looking forward. He looked like yet another tired commuter, ready to return to his ship after a long day. It was clear that David knew how to blend in when he had to.

Though how he would avoid being recognized while presenting a bare face to the world was beyond Matteo.

His eyes still on David, Matteo began to inch his way toward the door.

About thirty feet away from the entrance, a Stormtrooper moved to block David’s way. “Your papers?”

David raised his chin, exposing his whole face. Matteo’s heart caught in his throat.

But the soldier didn’t pull out his pistol, didn’t move to grab him, didn’t even shout. He just stared down at David impassively.

Matteo’s eyes widened.

They didn’t know what David looked like under his mask.

And they didn’t know what Matteo looked like with a mask, either.

“Yeah, I just had a question about the papers,” David drawled, taking on an accent Matteo had never heard before, not from anyone else and certainly not from him. He wondered if it was a dialect from some distant planet he’d never heard of. Somehow it wouldn’t surprise him. Regardless, it was a seamless transition, almost like David had left the womb shaping his words like this. Matteo took it as his cue to keep moving. “These are good to get me to the next planet over, right?”

The Stormtrooper took the proffered papers and glanced down at them. “I believe so,” he answered, somewhat bemusedly. “These are valid papers.”

“And…” Matteo strained to hear as he ducked behind a pillar. “What about the planet after that?”

“These are valid papers,” the Stormtrooper repeated, as if unsure what answer David was looking for.

“And the planet after that?” David asked, blinking up at the soldier guilelessly.

“Sir - ”

“What about the end of the galaxy?”

“You can go anywhere that accepts these papers,” the Stormtrooper said. Now he sounded more irritated than confused. This seemed like a dangerous game to be playing.

From the glint in David’s eyes, though, it was clearly a game he was playing on purpose. “And they’re valid until the end of the month, right?”

If Stormtroopers could visibly frown, Matteo was sure this one would. “Yes? You can see the expiration date, right?”

David blinked down at the papers, as if seeing them for the first time. “And if I go to a different planet,” he said, “will it be this month there, too?”

The Stormtrooper had clearly had enough at this point. “Sir, move along now,” he said, putting his hand on David’s arm.

Which was evidently exactly what David wanted, because immediately he pulled his hand back and said, very loudly, “Are you assaulting me? Don’t imperial soldiers abide by planetary laws, too?”

The Stormtrooper held up both his hands in a placating gesture, but the damage was done. David had drawn the eyes of the surrounding crowd, Stormtroopers and civilians alike.

“What’s going on here?” a Stormtrooper said as he tried to shove his way to the front of the crowd, but David was paying him no mind.

“We’ve followed all the Empire’s rules and paid all the Empire’s tariffs,” he said, the volume of his voice rising with each word, “only for you to come in destroying perfectly well-to-do establishments, wreaking havoc on the tax-payers of this community, and now _physically assaulting_ a citizen who’s asking a simple question.”

Matteo’s heart hammered wildly in his chest. He couldn’t imagine anyone speaking to anyone else like that, especially not if they had a lethal weapon strapped to their leg. If any of the soldiers so chose, they could easily put an end to this, right here, right now.

But in this square, as many Stormtroopers as there were in the vicinity, the civilians greatly outnumbered the soldiers. It wasn’t typical to have such a military presence in this city, Matteo knew from prior experience. So this must be new for everyone here. And David must be keenly aware of this fact. Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the crowd to swell up in a circle around David and the Stormtrooper, well clear of the entrance, bolstered by the feeling of solidarity to offer up their own shouted complaints. The Stormtroopers were starting to look overwhelmed by the noise. They probably weren’t used to the concept of crowd control, probably had never had to do such a thing.

It wasn’t something that would have occurred to Matteo, though, not on his own. In this situation he could never have been so clear-headed. He honestly didn’t know many people who would be.

Not for the first time that night, Matteo wondered what exactly he’d gotten himself into.

David turned his head, then, and found Matteo’s gaze instantly. He shouldn’t have been able to tell where Matteo was, not when he’d covered so much ground since they’d parted. And yet the way their eyes met felt almost effortless. There was a slight lift at the corner of his mouth. Not the kind of expression many people would notice.

But Matteo noticed.

And he knew, somehow. He knew exactly what David was trying to say.

He took in a deep breath, to brace himself.

And he ran.

“Hey!” Someone yelled behind him, but he didn’t pay attention - couldn’t. He could only keep running.

He slammed against the side of his ship, his wonderful, beloved junkheap of a ship, and palmed wildly at the lock. As soon as the entrance ramp slid down, he scrambled on board and ran for the cockpit.

Through the windshield glass he could see David running, too, and a whole entourage of Stormtroopers following after him. It was easier to appreciate from a distance how fast David was, how tireless. He ran with a purpose, every step feeling well-placed and deliberate. But as quick as he was, the Stormtroopers weren’t far behind either.

“Close the door!” David shouted.

Matteo stared at him. Had he gone mad?

“Please, Matteo,” David yelled, as if he could hear exactly what Matteo was thinking, “trust me!”

In the end, those words were all it took. Matteo slammed his palm down on the button.

The ramp slowly began to rise. Matteo watched as David leapt, grabbing at the edge of it with both his hands, and hoisted himself up with an astonishing amount of strength. The door closed just moments before the Stormtroopers made it there themselves.

It was the same as before. A lot was happening, so much Matteo’s brain couldn’t keep up with any of it. But he was in the cockpit of his ship now, and that meant he was in a place he knew, knew as well as he knew his own heart. When all else failed, reason and emotion and instinct and all the feelings that lived inside of him, he still had his knowledge of his ship, so deeply ingrained inside of him he’d sooner forget how to speak than how to fly.

So muscle memory took over, the way it always did. Matteo began the process of launching, the sequence almost as familiar to him as his own name. He’d never moved so fast. The ship’s engines roared to life beneath his feet, a thrum that vibrated comfortingly through his whole body. Stormtroopers were scrambling back from the heat, the flames, with a crowd gathering at a safe distance from the commotion. He hardly noticed any of it. He barely even noticed when David crawled into the cockpit and pulled himself up into a standing position behind Matteo.

Right now he had one thing to do and he would do it, just the same as he’d always done.

One more lever pulled down, one more sequence completed. The thrusters blazed to life, lifting them off the ground.

And Matteo flew them into the sky, leaving an entire world behind.

-

It was only after they were a good distance away from all the Stormtroopers and the danger, only after Matteo double and triple checked the ship’s radar to make sure that no one had followed them, only after David had left the cockpit to find a place on the ship to bunk, that he finally let himself relax, switching on auto-pilot so he could slump back in his chair. The back of his skull hit the headrest, and in that moment it hit him, really hit him, that he was not alone on this ship. Would not be alone, in fact, for a while yet.

It’d been a very long time since he’d last sat in this cockpit and known someone else was on this ship with him. He'd thought he would never let that happen again.

He didn’t quite know how to feel about David constantly proving him wrong.

He cast a glance down at the radar once more. An empty screen, the way it should be. He ran a finger across the panel, tracing a line across the fine layer of dust that covered it. This ship was old and a little dusty and more than a little rickety, but it was his. He’d paid for it with his own money. Clean money, because the idea that he owned something like this honestly had been important to him for a reason he didn’t have the words for.

Mostly it just felt good to know that he’d truly earned this. That there was not a single thing anyone could use to take it away from him. Aside from brute force, maybe, or underhanded means. And those he had experience dealing with in spades.

The door behind him slid open. He turned his head as David walked in.

“Hey,” David said.

Matteo straightened in his seat, watching as David came to a stop a few steps behind his chair. “You can sit in the co-pilot’s chair, if you want.” No one had sat in that chair in years, and here Matteo was offering it away just because he had someone to give it to. Sometimes he surprised even himself.

“It’s okay,” David said, resting his hands lightly on the shoulders of Matteo’s chair. “I wouldn’t belong there, anyway.”

Not as much as David surprised him, though.

Matteo picked up a small silver ball from the dashboard and began to toss it in the air. He kept a number of trinkets in here to pass the time away with. Often the restlessness in his hands only ceased when he held something in them.

“Did you find a good place to put your stuff?” he said to the ball as he threw it toward the ceiling. “There’s a couple bunks near the back.”

“Yeah, I did,” David said. “Those beds look pretty unused, though. Do you never sleep?”

Matteo shrugged. David said it like a joke, but honestly on a typical flight he hardly ever left the cockpit. He hardly ever wanted to. The machinery around him, the low hum of the ship, constant, warm, nearly alive under his hands - this was the closet he’d ever come to finding a place he actually belonged in. The stars didn’t judge him, in the endless depths of outer space. They didn’t give a rat’s ass about him. He liked it that way.

“I can’t stop thinking about today,” Matteo said. He caught the ball in his palms and let his gaze flicker over to David.

“Yeah?” David said, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Matteo said. “Like, I just keep thinking… Did we really do that?”

“What part?” David asked dryly. He was smiling, though, and so Matteo couldn’t help but smile, too.

“All of it. Holy fuck.” He dropped the ball into his lap and dragged both hands through his hair, letting out a shaky laugh. “Today’s been batshit insane.”

“Yeah.” David’s smile faltered a little. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” Matteo said, and was surprised to find that he meant it. “I mean, what you did back there, with the Stormtrooper asking for your papers? You’re a fucking genius.”

David huffed out a laugh. “And what about you?”

Matteo blinked. “What about me?”

“The way you flew out of there with a dozen people around the ship trying to get in,” David said. “The route you took to make sure no one followed us. The maneuvers to get out of the loading bay when they were trying to close the doors on us. That’s really hard to do. Your instincts - I mean, wow. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Matteo looked down at his hands. It seemed entirely disproportionate for a voice that awed to be coming out of someone like David, directed at someone like him. “I don’t know about that.”

“Matteo,” David said, “you’re an amazing pilot.”

He almost couldn’t bear it, hearing words like those from David’s mouth. He didn’t know why. He just couldn’t stand the sound of them.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, mostly so that David would say something else.

David tilted his head. “What?”

“Do you really not care where we go?”

David propped his chin on his hand, resting an elbow on the chair’s headrest. There was a tiny crease between his brows, as if he was deep in thought, turning over the question in his head.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

It was strange to hear him be so noncommittal about this when he seemed like he’d known exactly what he wanted from the moment Matteo had met him. Admittedly that wasn’t that long ago, but David was just the kind of person who left such a strong impression that it almost didn’t matter Matteo had only known him for a few hours. He still knew him.

“It’s your money,” Matteo reminded him. “I’m pretty sure that means you can tell me to go wherever you want.”

“What I want…” There was hesitation, now, in David’s voice. Not the kind of pause he took on purpose, to let things sink in or to dupe a Stormtrooper. This pause was a real one. “I don’t know. I want to go - somewhere. Anywhere that isn’t where we were.”

Those words. They rang in Matteo’s ears, clear as a bell.

The feeling of recognition reverberated throughout his entire body.

“You’re running away from something,” he said.

Something flickered across David’s face, something inscrutable. He turned his head and looked into Matteo’s eyes.

“So are you,” David said, softly.

“No,” Matteo said. “I’m just running.”

He wondered, for a moment, if David would ask him to explain what he meant. If he did, he wasn’t sure he had the answer. These were two different things; that was all he knew. And he knew it in the core of his bones.

But that wasn’t the question David asked, in the end.

In the end he asked, “Why?”

Matteo had never been asked that before, about something like this.

He had an answer to it, though. That surprised him even more.

“Because it’s either that or stay put,” he said. “And I’ve never really felt like there was anywhere worth staying.”

He didn’t know that was his answer before he said it. He didn’t even know he had the words to begin with.

It felt strange to let them go. He’d felt that way a lot tonight.

He just wasn’t accustomed to being so honest.

“Yeah,” David said. “I know the feeling.”

Matteo watched him. Right now he couldn’t do anything else.

“Let’s go somewhere we’ve never been before,” he said.

David’s eyes flickered up to meet his. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Matteo said. “I’ve been to a lot of places in the universe. But not everywhere.”

David smiled. It was small, but it was there. “I’ve been to a lot of places, too.”

“So that’ll help us narrow it down, right?” Matteo said. And he couldn’t help it; he burst into a grin.

David’s smile grew wider. Matteo felt absurdly victorious at the sight.

And then something started beeping angrily in the background, and David’s smile dropped almost immediately. Both their heads turned toward the radar screen.

Matteo rubbed at his eyes. “Is someone following us?” he said incredulously.

“Yes,” David said. “And I think I know who it is.” His voice came out sounding strained, almost strangled. Matteo had never heard him sound like that before. It made fear prickle at the tips of his fingers, to wonder at what could have perturbed David like this.

Matteo looked up at him. “Should we - ”

“Yes,” David said.

So for the second time that night, Matteo didn’t hesitate.

He slammed his hands down on the controls.

And now they were moving at the speed of light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5/31/20 - my friends commissioned [this incredible piece](https://twitter.com/miirvrt/status/1266539494884478977) by miivrt based on the last scene in this fic on Twitter! Please put this art into your eyeballs because it is absolutely amazing and gets these characters more right than any thousands of words i could possibly write on the subject!!!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I didn’t come up with the name,” Matteo said. “The ship came with it. But… I don’t know. I didn’t want to change it. It just... felt right.” His voice grew more hesitant with each word he spoke until the last word was barely more than a whisper, as if he was slowly realizing how stupid he thought they sounded out loud. Like maybe it was stupid to take something like this so seriously.
> 
> But the thing was, it wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t stupid at all. It was enviable, honestly, to care about something so much you would do anything in your power to keep it simply because you didn’t want to let it go. The art of wanting - Matteo had it down to a science.
> 
> David didn’t know a thing about it at all.

**PART II**

That night, David dreamed he stood in a river of blood.

He didn’t know whose blood it was. That was what made it a nightmare.

He woke up with ice in his chest and fire burning in his gut, shirt clinging to his skin with his own sweat and breath clattering out of his lungs in a way he couldn’t control. He looked up at the nondescript grey ceiling above his head and clutched at the stiff sheets at his side. For a wild and terrifying moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. Trapped, he thought. No way out. He squeezed at the sheets harder and closed his eyes, forcing his lungs into submission, counting his every breath with mechanical precision. When the red behind his eyelids finally faded to black he opened his eyes, and he felt -

Not safe, exactly. On the back of a ship hurtling through space at a speed he couldn’t even comprehend it was pretty difficult to feel safe. And besides, he hardly ever felt _safe_ anywhere. But he felt - hidden. He felt unknowable. Far away from anyone who might know him or think they knew him. And that came close enough to safety for him.

He turned his head to the side. The bunk next to his - standard issue, it looked like, with a simple metal frame and a flat white mattress that was identical to his - seemed untouched since he’d gone to bed some hours before. Which didn’t exactly surprise him. But it did make something twinge a little in his chest.

Was there even any point in trying to check the time? Was Matteo’s ship governed by standard space-travel timekeeping conventions, or did Matteo have his own timekeeping system? Did he even care?

David ran a hand through his hair and let out a shaky exhale. Then he swung himself out of bed, and pulled his clothes on.

By the time he was finished he already felt worlds better. There was something about the ritual of a morning that nearly always steadied his hands and his thoughts. Something about putting himself back together, piece by piece, deciding exactly how the universe would see him today, what parts of him it wouldn’t. So much was beyond his control, and sometimes the thought overwhelmed him, nearly drowned him with his own helplessness. This, though, was something that would always be his. For better or for worse.

He slid his gloves into place over his hands, and finally he was ready. He walked out of the room to find Matteo.

Not that it would be hard. It was a rather small ship, all things considered. Clearly built for hauling cargo and not much else, with a tiny bunk area, a tinier kitchen, and a huge door behind which David could only assume was the brig. He took his time walking through it all, silently taking stock of the place he would presumably be spending a good deal of time in for the next while. He couldn’t help but find himself utterly fascinated by how Matteo had furnished his ship. Trinkets and interesting-looking odds and ends - feathers, gold and silver chains, beads - hung from lights and levers and knobs. A richly woven tapestry stretched across the doorway of the kitchen, saturated in earthy browns and reds and greens, the old and worn look of it at immediate but not displeasing odds with the dully gleaming surfaces of the metal walls. A pair of scuffed-up boots lay in a heap by a plain-looking chair, over which someone’s brown leather jacket was draped. This place - it was small, but it felt lived in. Which only felt appropriate. David didn’t know if he knew Matteo long enough to make that kind of judgment. Still, he felt it.

He let his finger trace over the seam of the jacket, rather self-indulgently, and tilted his face back. His breath caught in his throat. Someone had painted a mural of constellations across the ceiling, meticulously and painstakingly, each star a single dot that from far away came together to form the most breathtaking images. Matteo could have just projected a holographic map of the stars into this room, if he’d wanted. But he’d had them painted individually by hand instead. David could tell. He could tell, also, that they had been painted with astonishing care and accuracy.

His own fingers twitched with the urge to create, in the face of art as beautiful as this. It was a feeling he could imagine losing himself in for a very long time.

But he couldn’t, not right now. Right now there was a task at hand. He straightened, willing his head to stop reeling, and walked into the cockpit.

Matteo was slouched horizontally across the captain’s chair, legs hoisted above one armrest and back resting against the other as if he hadn’t moved since David had left him here. He wasn’t asleep. In one hand he fidgeted with a small silver coin, rubbing his thumb against the edge of it over and over again. The other was tucked in his pocket, somewhere David couldn’t see.

Not for the first time, David wondered where this man had come from. This man in the old brown vest and the faded cream shirt with the top two buttons undone and the grey scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. He had his guesses, of course, because he had guesses about pretty much everything. Still, guesswork wasn’t certainty, and if there was something he knew about himself, it was that he could never have enough certainty.

Conversely, he doubted Matteo could even begin to guess where he came from. Perhaps he should feel ashamed of that. But it rather pleased him more than it should.

“Hey,” Matteo said, unmoving.

David leaned an elbow on the shoulder of the co-pilot’s chair and looked down at him. “Hey.”

Matteo didn’t look up. “Sleep well?”

“Yes,” David lied. “And you?”

Matteo shrugged. “I’ve charted a course for this planet.” He tapped a finger on one of the screens, displaying a glowing map of an unfamiliar solar system. If David didn't recognize it that probably meant it wasn't very close by, though he supposed there had to be gaps even in his own knowledge of the galaxy. “Not that many people, but looks like it's outside imperial control and otherwise fairly governed. It should be safe for you.”

David didn’t miss the way Matteo didn’t answer his question - he hardly ever missed it, not when it was so painfully obvious - but in this moment he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was too busy processing the idea that Matteo had actually put thought into what might be a safe destination for him. A lot of thought, it seemed. Careful thought. This was a man who clearly knew his way around the galaxy. And yet he'd delivered that thought in a way that felt thoroughly casual, almost underplayed. So he had a lot of knowledge, and it came easily to him. He almost didn’t seem to realize how easy.

The thing was, the description Matteo had given the planet was something David had been quietly hoping for all along. And somehow Matteo had managed to intuit that without him saying anything at all.

“Thanks,” David said. It felt like an utterly inadequate word, but he didn’t have any other ones, and besides, this was far from a new feeling for him. He was used to it by now. “Do you know what you’ll do after the trip?”

Matteo let out a soft exhale. “Don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out.”

Somehow, David felt as if he’d been expecting an answer like that. “Uh huh.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’ll have all this money I need to figure out how to spend, right?” Matteo flashed David a grin. Brief as it was, it almost made David want to smile, too.

He leaned his shoulder against the wall beside him. “Yeah? Got any ideas?”

“A swimming pool filled with honey,” Matteo said without skipping a beat.

The mental image was so absurd it startled a laugh out of David. “You could be more ambitious. You could buy a whole house and fill it with honey.”

“I could buy a whole street,” Matteo mused.

“A whole planet.”

“A whole galaxy!” Matteo flung his arms out wide.

David laughed again. Around Matteo it seemed to be easier to do that than it usually was. “Maybe start smaller than that,” he said. “Maybe get a new ship, first.”

He meant it as a joke, but Matteo fell silent and cast his eyes downward, and David realized with a deep pang in his chest that it was the wrong thing to say.

He should apologize. He should say something, anything. But his mind was hopelessly and utterly blank in the face of Matteo’s silence.

He hated it, he decided. He hated the idea that Matteo might lose his words because of him. He hated it because it felt so damn wrong.

Slowly, Matteo reached out and laid a hand on the dashboard of the ship. It was such a small gesture, so spare, the rest of his body utterly motionless in his chair. Yet David couldn’t look away.

“No,” Matteo said finally. “I don’t think I would.”

There was something strange in his voice, something that sounded dangerously close to wobbling.

And David’s heart wobbled with it.

“I didn’t - ” David frowned. “I didn’t mean to imply…”

He didn’t know what exactly he wanted to say. What was the right ending to that sentence? That he didn’t mean to imply that Matteo’s ship wasn’t good enough for him? To imply that he couldn’t recognize how important this ship was to Matteo, how this place was likely the closest thing Matteo had to a real home? It all seemed too silly, too melodramatic to say out loud.

Before he could think of the right way to fill in the blank, Matteo leaned his head back, and met David’s gaze.

His eyes, David thought, awed into speechlessness. He’d never seen a man with eyes that were so clear, so honest. Like David could see everything Matteo was feeling and had ever felt inside them, if he looked into them long enough.

“It’s okay,” Matteo said.

It was two simple words, and Matteo said them simply, too, without fanfare, without embellishment. His voice didn’t shake. His gaze didn’t waver. It was as if he knew what David had meant to say even better than David knew himself. As if he saw the words inside David’s head, and passed judgment upon them, and granted forgiveness, just like that.

David wasn’t used to believing that absolution was possible for someone like him. But somehow - somehow, in this moment, he almost wanted to.

“Okay,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”

Matteo folded his hands over his stomach. “Hm?”

“Why’d you call her the Silver Sparrow?” David said, gesturing vaguely at the ship around them.

Matteo frowned slightly. “How’d you know that’s her name?”

“Saw it on the side of the ship when I was coming in,” David said, which wasn’t a lie.

Matteo seemed to accept the explanation at face value, as he leaned back in his seat and tilted his head back in contemplation. “I didn’t come up with the name,” he said. “She came with it. But… I don’t know. I didn’t want to change it. It just... felt right.” His voice grew more hesitant with each word he spoke until the last word was barely more than a whisper, as if he was slowly realizing how stupid he thought they sounded out loud. Like maybe it was stupid to take something like this so seriously.

But the thing was, it wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t stupid at all. It was enviable, honestly, to care about something so much you would do anything in your power to keep it simply because you didn’t want to let it go. The art of wanting - Matteo had it down to a science.

David didn’t know a thing about it at all.

“That makes sense,” David said. “It’s a good name. What else would you have named her?”

“Don’t know,” Matteo mumbled. “I’m not that creative.”

There it was again, Matteo ducking his head down, filled with uncertainty, with doubt he didn’t deserve to have. And there it was again, that uncontrollable urge within David to make it better. Alongside the quiet despair he felt that he didn’t know how.

David pursed his lips. “Does it bother you that I ask so many questions?”

Matteo blinked up at David. “No,” he said.

How curious it was to learn that there were questions that Matteo wouldn’t hesitate to answer, and to learn what those questions were. David could only wonder what it meant that this last question was one of those.

“I guess the thing about it is,” Matteo said, “she’s small and old and kind of scrappy, right? She’s not fancy, she’s not flashy. She’s not the kind of ship that’ll stand out in a loading dock.”

He reached a hand above his head, splaying his fingers out wide.

“But she flies,” he said.

Now, finally, there was a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. Which made David’s heart want to soar, too.

“Like a sparrow,” David said.

Matteo met his eyes, and nodded.

“Yes,” he said. His eyes were so bright it nearly broke David’s heart. “Like a sparrow.”

“Like you,” David said. He couldn’t help himself, even though he knew he should.

Matteo’s smile grew just a little wider. “Humans don’t fly.”

David hadn’t meant it as a joke. But he didn’t know how to say that out loud. So he glanced down at the floor, and shrugged.

“No,” David said. “But wouldn’t it be beautiful if we did?”

Matteo turned his head to the windshield.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I guess it would.”

He fell silent, then. David didn’t really know what else to say, and it seemed like Matteo didn’t, either. Which was probably for the best, anyway. He’d discovered last night that it was difficult to stay in the cockpit whenever Matteo got like this, which was often. He’d become so engrossed in the act of piloting it was like he’d fallen into a trance. He’d forget to talk for long stretches of time, and then he’d forget what they were talking about in the first place. And David always felt like an intruder, in those moments. Like he was interrupting something important. Something he’d never be a part of, or more accurately, wasn’t allowed to be.

Not that this was a new feeling.

“I, um…” David bit his lip. “I should go do some reading on that planet you were telling me about.”

Matteo nodded, and otherwise said nothing more. So David left the cockpit and into the core of the ship. The day before he’d found a spare holo-pad lying on the kitchen table, and Matteo had said he could borrow it when he’d asked. He pulled it into his lap and turned it on. And stared.

A news alert had appeared at the bottom of the screen, alongside a glowing notification of over ninety-nine missed news alerts. Matteo didn’t keep up with current events, it seemed. But David did. He tapped on it and read the headline.

_LAST KNOWN SURVIVING JEDI HAS BEEN REPORTED MISSING_

At first the words didn’t sink in properly. He could make sense of each word individually, but not together as one sentence. His mind was blank, unhelpfully so, and he had to read the headline again, and then once more, before the implications hit him.

And when they did, it really did feel as if he’d been punched in the face.

Slowly David lowered his head into his shaking hands. He let his fingers pull at his hair, the sharp pain against his skull grounding him - the only sensation, in fact, that kept his head from spinning away entirely.

“Fuck,” he whispered. It was the only sound he seemed capable of.

He’d been a monumental idiot. That much was clear. Why was he so shocked? Hadn’t he known how quickly his family catch on? What lengths they’d go to find him? It’s not that he’d ever believed otherwise. It’s that he’d wanted to believe it.

He should know better, by now, than to want things. It never turned out well.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe, a ritual he knew so well at this point he could fall into it without even thinking about it. In for a long moment. Out for another. In; out. In. Out.

They wouldn’t find David. Not here. Matteo - he would get them where they needed to go. David believed that. He didn’t have any other choice, at this point.

When his heartbeat felt halfway to normal again, he opened his eyes. He closed out of the article and pulled up the file about Matteo’s planet.

Thinking about anything other than where he needed to go, right now, seemed like a waste of time.

-

He didn't know how much time he spent staring at the tablet. It was probably too much. It turned out maybe he was a little too good at not thinking about things he didn't want to think about. He squinted at the clock, frowning. He was fairly certain he'd eaten something earlier, at least. Maybe a few somethings. He couldn't remember that well.

He rubbed at his aching eyes. God, he was tired. He didn’t want to go to bed, though. He really didn’t want to. When he closed his eyes he still saw nothing but crimson.

There was a quiet voice in his head that told him his lack of desire to go to bed meant that he should actually do it. After all, he had years of experience doing the opposite of what he wanted to do, didn’t he? But that didn’t mean selfishness didn’t still live inside of him.

The thing about being on this ship was, almost no one knew he was here, and that meant none of them could tell him what to do. He had all this freedom to ignore his better instincts. It almost felt like too much power to have, especially for someone like him.

Still, he knew he would use it, now that he had the opportunity. Sometimes it was easier to make bad choices. It just was.

So he grabbed a stylus and pulled the holo-pad back in front of him. His better instincts would tell him to figure out where exactly he was headed and draft a plan for when he got there. Which he didn’t currently have, admittedly. All of his plans before he got on this ship started and ended here. He’d refused to think further ahead than that - was tired of it, frankly, of this constant pressure to be two steps ahead of himself at all times. Tired to the bone.

And he refused to start now, when no one could tell him otherwise. Instead, he drew a hand.

David hadn’t imagined he’d get much time to draw, honestly. The idea of a space odyssey didn’t exactly leave much room for such frivolous pursuits. Not to mention he’d gotten used to putting off his art for bigger, more important things. It’d been a while since the last time he’d gotten a chance to sketch, and he could feel it in the clumsiness of his lines, the hesitance of his shading. It was something he had to slowly overcome as he went, like shaking rust from his joints. The image of the hand in his head was vivid and specific - pale against an ambiguous background; delicate and long fingers, almost graceful; yet scarred from years of hard work, implying strength, resilience in the face of pain and suffering. The contrast fascinated him; he ached to capture it on the screen in front of him. He wanted nothing more than for his art to feel human. Yet his lines were irritatingly simple, his shading uninspired. There was no life to it, no spark of creativity. How infuriating.

He let out a rough exhale. It was just supposed to be a warm-up, he reminded himself. It didn’t have to be perfect. The whole point was that it shouldn’t be perfect. But that didn’t do much to stop that old and familiar tug of frustration from pulling at his gut. This feeling that what he was laying down on the screen didn’t match the image in his head - would never match it. No one would see this drawing, and it wasn’t even supposed to mean anything more than it was. It was a hand. It was just a hand. Still, he was frustrated. He was frustrated at his own frustration.

Then again, perhaps struggling with his own inadequacy was another thing he had plenty of practice at.

The sound of thick fabric rustling prickled at David’s ears.

David looked up instinctively, heart skipping a beat in his chest with anticipation. Sure enough - Matteo stood in the doorway, holding the tapestry aside with one hand. It couldn’t be anyone else, through sheer circumstance. Yet it was so easy to move in response to him, to accommodate his presence. The thought was strange. Almost frightening.

“Should I be worried about the ship?” David said, raising his eyebrows.

“There’s this thing called auto-pilot.” Matteo shuffled to the table and slid into place next to David, leaving a few inches of space between their elbows. “And…. I saw the light was on, and I wanted to see what you were up to. I thought you already went to bed.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” David decided not to mention that he hadn’t even bothered trying. “I’m sketching.”

Matteo’s gaze drifted down to the stylus in David’s hand, and then to the holo-pad in front of him. “You’re an artist,” he said. It wasn’t a question. There was, in fact, a hushed awe in his words, like he was discovering something new - something spectacular.

David glanced away, inexplicably abashed. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Sketching is just… something that clears my head.”

What he meant by that was that sometimes it felt less like he wanted to draw and more that he needed to in order to feel more like a real person. There were precious few things out there that made him feel like that, like exerting control over how he saw and interpreted the universe around him could somehow make him feel more in control over himself. That was part of the reason why he rarely ever showed his art to other people. He wanted, with a desperation that sometimes scared him, for this to be a thing that remained entirely his own. Even the thought of other people trying to take ownership over it - he couldn’t fathom what that would make him feel.

But that was a lot to say out loud, and he didn’t know how it would sound. He didn’t particularly want to find out.

“Can I see?” Matteo asked.

It was one of the first questions he’d asked David since they’d boarded the ship. It was a real question, too. Matteo wasn’t already reaching for the holo-pad, he didn’t have an air of expectation about him for an affirmative answer, he wasn’t even really smiling. He was just waiting.

David almost said no because that was what he almost always said when people asked him something like that, especially if it was a sketch he hadn’t finished yet. But there was this look in Matteo’s eyes. Try as he might, he couldn’t ignore it.

It was almost like that was the answer Matteo was expecting all along.

David swallowed, and said, “Yes.”

He passed the holo-pad over and watched as Matteo took it, wrapping his hands carefully around its edge. David found his gaze wandering to those hands, those thin and long fingers, blueish veins stark against the paleness of his skin. There was something about his touch that seemed so delicate, so careful. And yet it was also steady - reliable. He was not the kind of person who would drop the holo-pad carelessly. It was almost like he was handling glass.

A faint white scar ran along the length of Matteo’s thumb, barely visible in the brightness of the overhead lights. But that was all it took.

Suddenly it was all too clear whose hand David had been imagining in the first place.

“It’s nice,” Matteo said.

David blinked. “Really?”

“I don’t know much about art,” Matteo said with an air of confession. He laid the holo-pad back on the table, gentle in a way that David found absurdly painful to witness. His stupid sketch didn’t deserve reverence like that. “But - there’s feeling to it. Movement. You’re really talented.”

David looked down. “It’s just a hand.”

Matteo huffed out a laugh. David hadn’t expected it. He felt strangely vindicated at the sound of it. Almost like he’d won something he hadn’t even known he wanted.

“But I knew what it was,” Matteo said. “I knew exactly what it was supposed to be. I think… creating something like that is harder than it sounds.”

David stared down at the half-finished drawing. He tried to imagine, for a moment, that he could see what Matteo saw in it.

But all he saw were the flaws. All he saw were the mistakes.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re probably right.”

Surely, though, Matteo must know that it was just as hard to see something as it was meant to be.

The back of David’s neck began to prickle. He looked up, and Matteo was staring straight at him.

“You should go to bed,” Matteo said.

Something in David’s chest trembled at the sound of a voice so gentle. “You think so?”

“I don’t know.” Matteo looked down at his hands. “You seem tired, that’s all.”

It was almost kind of funny that Matteo would say that when his own eyelids were so heavy, the weight in his shoulders so pronounced. The shadows under his eyes were so dark David wanted, impulsively, irrationally, to reach out and smudge them away with the pad of his thumb like so much charcoal.

It wasn’t that easy, though. It would never be that easy.

“Okay,” David said. “If you think I should go to bed, I’ll go to bed.”

Matteo’s gaze flickered up to meet David’s again.

“Will you go to bed, too?” David said, just to see if Matteo would ignore this question too.

Matteo looked at him, for a long moment. And then he looked away.

“Maybe,” he said. He smiled a very faint smile, and glanced back up at David. “Sleep well, okay?”

“I’ll try,” David said quietly.

“Okay,” Matteo said, almost as if to himself. He got up, and he left the room. The draping fabric of the kitchen tapestry fell shut behind him softly, like a whisper. David watched as the motion of it slowed to a still. He watched for a long time.

And by the end of it, he still couldn’t decide if he’d rather Matteo had ignored his question than lie to him.

-

When he woke up the next morning, he expected to find Matteo in the cockpit again. Instead he was back in the kitchen, rummaging through the tiny cabinet by the stove. It seemed like whatever he was trying to find, he was having a hard time of it.

David slid into a chair. “What are you doing out of the cockpit?”

“This part of the flight is pretty easy. Don’t need to be there for it. And besides…” There was a brief pause as Matteo chucked an empty box behind his shoulder, missing the trashcan next to the door by several feet. “Thought I could be a good host and make some breakfast. Or something.”

David toed at the box, which had landed a few inches away from his foot. “Have any ideas?”

Matteo stepped back and put his hands on his hips, letting out a long sigh of frustration. “No.”

From what David had been able to gather, the kitchen wasn’t very well-stocked. David didn’t have a lot of experience with that sphere of domesticity - with any spheres of domesticity at all, really - but even he could tell from the sparseness of the shelves how little variety in food there was. Mostly all that was left aside from a heap of premade rations was a few boxes of dried crackers, one container of dehydrated fruits, a stack of a flat and brittle kind of bread, and packets of jerky from various different animals, alongside various condiments and one absurdly large bottle of liquor.

“Do you think that stuff will last us the rest of the trip?” David asked.

“Shit,” Matteo breathed. “Honestly, probably not. Fuck, I’m sorry. I usually stock just enough for me, and we left in kind of a rush…”

“It’s okay.” David stuck his thumbs in his pockets. “That’s sort of my fault, anyway.”

Matteo huffed out a laugh, brief and hushed as if he was reluctant to let it go. David had the feeling that he was the kind of person who tended to hold his laughter inside of himself, who perhaps wasn’t even accustomed to having a reason not to. A small part of him wanted to tell him it was okay. A small part of him wanted to hear all of it.

“Maybe we could stop at a market,” David said. “Or an outpost.”

Matteo turned around to frown at him. “I don’t know how safe that would be.”

“Starving to death doesn’t exactly sound that safe, either,” David pointed out.

“Okay, but…” Matteo shuffled his feet. “I don’t…”

“I’ll pay for it,” David said quickly. “It’s not that big of a deal. We both need food to live.”

Matteo stared at him. “Wow, are you made of money or something?”

David laughed awkwardly. “It’s - you know, it’s the least I could do after all the trouble I’ve caused you.”

Because that was the thing, wasn’t it? Matteo didn’t deserve all this chaos David had unleashed upon him. He didn’t know for sure, but he suspected Matteo wasn’t that involved in the political matters of the universe for a reason. He didn’t exactly seem like the kind of person who would lay down his life for the anti-imperial Rebellion - to be fair most civilians didn’t even know the Rebellion existed, for good reason - but he obviously didn’t want the Empire to be chasing after him and the illegal parts of his cargo, either. In fact it would probably be in Matteo’s best interests if he kept out of that intergalactic struggle entirely. And yet David hadn’t hesitated once to pull him into immediate harm’s way when half the Stormtroopers on the last planet had been out for his blood.

He really was the most selfish person in the universe.

“You haven’t caused me any trouble, though,” Matteo said.

David frowned. This was just objectively untrue, and yet Matteo’s eyes were clear, and his voice was, too. Like he believed he was being honest. “I haven’t?”

“Trouble implies inconvenience. And…” Matteo cast his eyes to the ground. “I don’t know. You being here… I don’t think that’s inconvenient.”

He stumbled on the words, almost mumbled them as if unused to shaping them with his mouth, as if uncertain that trying was the right thing to do. And he wouldn’t look at David, in this moment. David could feel, his heart twisting in his chest at the thought, that this was not an easy thing for him to say. That, in fact, an admission like this - small as it might seem - was rather monumental.

And it was overwhelming, honestly, to witness it. To know that Matteo struggled with these words and said them anyway. Said them about David - to him.

Did he deserve this? Did that even matter?

“Wow,” David said past the sudden lump in his throat. “Thanks.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Matteo said. Finally his eyes met David’s.

David could see that he meant it.

“Still,” David said. “Now I definitely have to pay for the food, as a token of my gratitude.”

Matteo smiled. “Do you really?”

“Yeah,” David said, matter of fact. “Those are the rules. I’d cook you something, but I can’t actually cook.”

“That’s okay.” Matteo cracked his knuckles. “I’ve got us covered there.”

David couldn’t help but grin in response. “Do you really? You were floundering for recipe ideas just a few minutes ago.”

“We just have to be resourceful about it,” Matteo said breezily. He turned back to the pantry. “You’d be surprised, the number of things you can do with just a few staple ingredients.”

David propped his chin up on his hand. “Uh huh.”

“Like, I think we could go a long way with this,” Matteo said, holding up the bottle of liquor into the air. “Don’t you?”

There was a spark of something in Matteo’s eyes that David couldn’t ignore. He didn’t expect to be taken seriously, welcomed the joke of the moment, in fact. And what was more - he was searching for something. Something in David’s face. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was looking for.

David thought he could guess what it was. He couldn’t be so presumptuous - shouldn’t - but for one breathless moment, he wanted to be; wanted not to hate himself for being so self-centered.

And so he let himself smile, because that was another thing he wanted to do.

And the warmth that flooded his gut when Matteo smiled back was the headiest rush he’d ever felt in his life.

-

They did make sandwiches, in the end. Not very good sandwiches. There was only so much one could do with a bottle of synthetic cheese sauce and a jar of pickled vegetables from a planet David had never been to. Matteo still managed to eat his meal in a few large bites, an impressive feat to watch. David leaned back in his seat, engrossed in the way Matteo was licking at the tips of his fingers after somehow managing to clean his whole plate spotless. He was sitting cross-legged in his chair, one knee bouncing up and down erratically. It was endlessly fascinating how Matteo could find all these new and inventive ways of sitting in a chair without even trying.

They’d both taken a few swigs from the bottle of liquor, as well. Nothing excessive but enough that David felt pleasantly warm, fingertips tingling with a welcome buzz. He didn’t usually like to drink alcohol that often; it was the kind of thing that lowered his guard without his realizing, and he rather disliked the way it made the room fuzzy at the edges if he had too much. He preferred to be fully aware of his surroundings, to be able to react properly if he ever needed to. Awareness made him feel in control, and control made him feel safe.

But - he felt safe now, too. Miles and miles from any other living thing aside from this man sitting across from him, this man who held his life in his hands - he felt comfortable. It’d been a long, long time since he’d felt anything close to comfort.

“I like it here,” David said.

Matteo’s gaze flickered over to him. “Really?”

He sounded so surprised. As if it had never occurred to him that anyone would ever say anything like that about his ship. His home.

But David hadn’t been lying. As it turned out, he liked it here very much.

“You’ve built something good for yourself here,” David said, “haven’t you?”

He wanted to hear what Matteo had to say. He wanted Matteo to say yes so badly. To recognize this, all of this, for what it was. And how lucky he was to have it all for his own.

Matteo pulled his sleeves over his hands and shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess.”

There was more to it, more that Matteo wanted to say. David was sure of it, just as he was sure that Matteo didn’t actually want to let this go - he just thought that he had to.

“What do you mean?” David asked. He’d be damned if he ever saw Matteo let go of something he didn’t want to.

Matteo glanced at him, then away once more. “It _is_ something,” he admitted. “I - I used to not have that much.”

“Before you bought the Silver Sparrow?”

“Yeah,” Matteo said. “Yeah, it was just me and my mom for a long time. But - ” Here, he took in a sharp breath. “I had to leave.”

David knew that feeling. He knew what that was like more than he could ever bring himself to say out loud. He almost wanted to ask Matteo why. He craved to know why, hungered to know if his reasons were anything like David’s. If there was anyone in this entire universe who understood what it was like to be so lonely when the loneliness was your fault.

He couldn’t, though. Because if Matteo was anything like David -

If Matteo was anything like David, he’d never say a thing to him again.

If he was anything like him at all, he wouldn’t be able to find the words.

“Was it hard?” David said instead.

“Yeah,” Matteo said softly. “Of course it was.”

Of course it was.

“Was it the hardest thing you’ve ever done?”

Matteo didn’t answer for a long while. Slowly, his hand clenched into a fist on the table, and then stretched out flat again. He didn’t seem like he was thinking about it. It kind of seemed like he already had his answer. It kind of seemed like his silence was for a different reason.

“No,” he said finally. “It wasn’t.”

David knew that feeling, too.

“In a way…” Matteo let out a soft breath. “In a way, it was almost easier. You know? It was almost easier to know I did the best thing for her.”

The words very nearly knocked the wind out of David’s lungs.

Funny, wasn’t it? He and Matteo - they really were the same. He’d felt it from the moment they met, like a vibration in the air. And now he was beginning to know Matteo - really know him. So it shouldn’t surprise him to learn that this was true.

But it did. Because the one difference between them was that Matteo was the most honest person he had ever met. And David didn’t come close. He hadn’t divulged even half of what Matteo gave to him freely, unthinkingly.

And yet he couldn’t shake this feeling that Matteo was beginning to know him, too.

“I ask you a lot of questions,” David said. “Don’t I?”

“I told you I didn’t mind,” Matteo said, glancing over at him.

“I know. But…” David exhaled roughly. “You don’t ask _me_ a lot of questions.”

Matteo frowned. “So?”

David blinked down at his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t you think that’s kind of unfair?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Matteo let his head drop down on his forearms. He tilted his head so he was looking at David sideways. It was an expression that David found painfully, hopelessly endearing. “I mean… I guess I just didn’t think I had questions you’d want to answer.”

There. Wasn’t that proof as good as any that Matteo knew him?

God. Maybe he knew him too well. Maybe it should scare him, to know that there was a person who had the power to lay out the darkest parts of his insides in front of him with a single word, who understood so much about the core of him when they’d only known each other for a matter of days.

It didn’t, though.

“And you want to answer my questions?” David said. “You want to talk about all this stuff?”

Matteo cast his gaze to the table.

“I want to talk about it if people want to listen,” he said, very quietly.

David wanted to listen. Frankly, he couldn’t remember ever wanting something so badly.

The thing that killed him was that he didn’t think that Matteo would believe him if he said that. And he didn’t know how to make him believe it.

In the end he didn’t try. He took hold of the bottle of liquor, threw his head back, and poured it down his throat. His chest burned. He didn’t care.

He straightened. Matteo was staring at him. Silently, he offered the bottle to Matteo.

And Matteo took it.

-

David no longer knew what time it was. He supposed in the vast and formless abyss of space time was a mere construct that held no power over anything, but admittedly there was a part of him that still craved the structure that minutes and hours gave to his days. That clung onto it even when he didn’t need to. How unsurprising to be the kind of person who only knew how to want useless things.

They were sitting in the common room, now. Or, more accurately, they were both slumped over in their seats, the bottle of liquor standing half empty on the floor between them. David’s head spun, vision blurring. He squeezed his eyes shut. For once he found the darkness almost comforting.

“Here’s a question for you,” Matteo said.

David opened his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Do you ever - ” Matteo hiccuped. “Do you ever wish you could just - speak the truth of yourself, without context, without anything else? Do you ever wish it didn’t scare the hell out of you?”

“Of course I have,” David said. “Every day.”

“Yeah,” Matteo mumbled. “Every day.”

Silence, for a beat.

“I’m trans,” David said.

There was a sharp intake of breath, like a gasp, like Matteo hadn’t expected David to say anything at all. “Oh.”

And then -

“I’m gay,” Matteo said.

David’s heart swelled, inexplicably. He let his head fall onto his arms, and he tried to think - searched himself for something else he could share. A secret for a secret; a part of him for a part of Matteo. It only felt fair.

“I’m from Alderaan,” David said. Matteo wouldn’t know the significance of that, most likely, how much it took for David to give this piece of him away. But David knew. The word fell off his tongue, and he could almost see the towering, majestic mountains he’d grown up among as a child right in front of him. He could almost feel the perpetual winter like an ache in his chest.

He loved Alderaan more than he could ever say out loud.

Matteo swallowed. David watched the motion of his throat, transfixed. “I’m from Corellia.”

He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it, either, so David didn’t ask. “I’m drunk,” he said instead.

“So am I.”

“Did that scare you?” David asked Matteo.

“No,” Matteo said.

“Me neither.”

“Good.”

Matteo said that word so easily David couldn’t help but smile.

“When you were a kid,” David said, “did the future scare you?”

Matteo made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, something like a groan. He straightened, and dragged his hands across his face.

“When I was a kid,” Matteo said, “I wanted to be a jedi knight.”

David blinked at him, momentarily rendered speechless. Somehow he hadn’t expected to hear that kind of thing from Matteo. Not at all.

“Do you believe in the Force?” David said, the words sending a quiet thrill down his spine. He anticipated the answer - dreaded it all at once.

The exhale Matteo let out was the quietest sound David had ever heard.

“No,” Matteo said. “Not anymore.”

David had expected it. He’d known it for a while, now, in the same way he knew that Matteo didn’t sleep, or that he would do absolutely anything to keep his ship. Some things didn’t have to be said out loud for him to hear.

Still. Still, it crushed something in his chest to hear this. To see the very proof of Matteo’s hope being crushed to dust, too.

“Why not?” David said. He watched Matteo’s face as he said the words, how he almost winced at the question.

“I just - ”

Matteo dragged a hand roughly through his hair. There was something in his eyes, something deeply and hopelessly sad, that made David’s whole chest want to unravel.

“I can’t,” Matteo whispered. “I just can’t.”

David swallowed hard. “Did something happen?”

“I think…” Matteo shook his head, as if clearing his thoughts. “I think it’s just hard to believe in some cosmic force that connects everyone and everything when you’re not used to feeling connected to anything at all.”

“Matteo,” David said, and found that he didn’t know how to continue.

“Did you know I haven’t seen my mom since I was seventeen?” Matteo let out a shaky laugh. The sound of it tore at something between David’s ribs. “I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”

“No,” David said quietly. “I didn’t know that.”

“I guess it’s hard to believe in the Force when bad things keep happening and they don’t make any sense,” Matteo said. He dropped his face into his hands. So now David couldn’t see his eyes. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

“I get that,” David said.

He really did.

Matteo spread his fingers, peeking out at David. “Do you believe in it?” he said, slow, halting.

David had to think about it. Had to think about everything he could say, and everything he wanted to say, and everything he shouldn’t say. The thing about being next to Matteo was that he wanted to forget that last list existed at all.

That was what truly scared him, that he might throw away a list like that so easily just because a person - a single person - made him want to.

“Yes,” he said, in the end. “I do.”

“How?”

David leaned back in his seat, tipping his head toward the ceiling. The stars above him were so fucking beautiful. Even if they weren’t real.

“I can feel it,” David said. “The balance in all things. When something happens, even if it’s good or bad, it’s like - it’s like the universe is talking to me. Either way, it makes me feel seen.”

Too much. He had said far too much.

“That sounds nice,” Matteo said.

The wistfulness in his voice was too much to bear.

“You don’t need the Force to feel that way,” David said.

A pause. “I don’t?”

“No.” David reached out and laid a finger on Matteo’s forehead, in the space between his eyes. “I see you.”

That was also too much.

But he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore, because Matteo’s eyes were shining in the dark. Practically glowing. David had never felt so good to make someone else smile.

“I see you, too,” Matteo murmured.

And David almost believed him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think I’m going to miss this tea,” David said.
> 
> And just like that - like smoke; like nothing - the warmth that always seemed to bloom between Matteo’s ribs in the face of David’s laughter was gone. No surprise - it had always been such a fragile, breakable thing. He knew it. Counted on it, in fact. Nothing in his life stayed; how could he expect anything inside of him to stay, either?
> 
> “You can get better tea where you’re going, probably,” Matteo said, voice light in a way he couldn’t feel. He turned to look at David, to prove to himself that he could do it. But that was a mistake, because David was looking down at his hands, and he wasn’t smiling at all, and somehow that hurt worse.
> 
> “No,” David said. “I don’t think I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: depictions of panic attacks, violence, blood, and Matteo's general disregard for his own physical well-being. If there's anything else I should warn for, please let me know.

**PART III**

Matteo didn’t know what time it was. He rarely knew that, rarely cared. David did, usually - he usually liked to know when the right time to go to bed was - which usually made Matteo feel like he should know. But right now David was sitting at the kitchen table, quietly watching Matteo move around the room. And it didn’t seem like he wanted to go to bed any time soon. So maybe he didn’t care what time it was, in this moment. So maybe Matteo didn’t have to care, either.

He turned the kettle on and started rummaging through the cabinet for the tea leaves. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used his kettle before David had boarded his ship. After David had come on board, though, was a different story. He’d used the kettle almost every night since the day they’d gotten too drunk for sense.

Matteo shook the little satchel he kept his favorite tea leaves in and frowned. The bag was light, which meant he was starting to run out. And it wasn’t easy to get these particular leaves, either. The plant they grew from could only be found on the moon of a planet he hadn’t set foot on in years.

Carefully - more carefully than he was accustomed to - he shook out leaves into two large cups, and poured boiling water in each cup to the brim. He took hold of the cups, the heat almost but not quite unbearable on the bare skin of his palms, and set one of them on the table. David wrapped his hands around it, not seeming to care how hot it was, and smiled.

And suddenly Matteo didn’t even care that he was running out of tea leaves.

The thought sat strangely in the pit of his stomach as if he’d swallowed a shard of ice, sharp and cold against his soft insides. He didn’t want it inside of him. He couldn’t even really explain why; he just knew that it didn’t belong there, to him.

He turned away as David brought the cup of tea to his mouth. Right now that was the last place he wanted to look.

“You always make such good tea,” David said.

Matteo shrugged, hands squeezing at the edge of the counter. “It’s just - timing. It’s not that hard.”

“You say that,” David said, “but I never seem to get it right.”

That pried a smile loose from somewhere inside Matteo’s chest, somehow. “I didn’t realize it was even possible to burn water until I met you.”

David laughed, a bright and warm sound that pulled at something inside Matteo’s gut. “See?” He sounded more smug than he had the right to be. “Boiling water takes skill, too.”

Matteo swallowed. “Are you saying I have skills?” It came out weaker than he would have liked, but maybe it could still pass as a joke if David hadn't been paying attention.

“Of course you do,” David said.

He sounded serious when he answered - almost painfully earnest. Of course he’d been paying attention; of course he wouldn’t let it slide as a joke.

Of course.

Matteo watched as David ran the tip of his finger around the rim of his cup, a careful and deliberate motion.

“I think I’m going to miss this tea,” David said.

And just like that - like smoke; like nothing - the warmth that always seemed to bloom between Matteo’s ribs in the face of David’s laughter was gone. No surprise - it had always been such a fragile, breakable thing. He knew it. Counted on it, in fact. Nothing in his life stayed; how could he expect anything inside of him to stay, either?

“You can get better tea where you’re going, probably,” Matteo said, voice light in a way he couldn’t feel. He turned to look at David, to prove to himself that he could do it. But that was a mistake, because David was looking down at his hands, and he wasn’t smiling at all, and somehow that hurt worse.

“No,” David said. “I don’t think I will.”

Matteo stared at him. He almost hoped David would look up at him. He almost dreaded it.

In the end, he didn’t. In the end their eyes didn’t meet at all.

They’d lived on this razor-thin edge of silence for days, now. The thing about David was - he knew how to live in that silence. He knew how to shape it, when to poke at it, when to leave it be.

But Matteo didn’t know. And he didn’t know what to do with himself now that David had named that silence and dragged it out in front of them, impossible to ignore. He didn’t know a single goddamn thing.

The floor under his feet tilted sideways violently. He thought, for a wild and delirious moment, that it was his head, all in his own head, his thoughts spinning so furiously his whole world had spun too, until he lost his balance and fell, the floor digging a dull bruise into his hipbone. And then he scrambled to his hands and knees and saw that David was clutching at the table with both his hands, eyes screwed shut and face awfully, unnaturally pale. And he knew this was real.

“Fuck,” he breathed. He scrambled to his feet and broke into a run for the cockpit. The ship pitched to the side again and he crashed against the wall, shoulder colliding hard with the metal. He palmed wildly at the door and braced himself against the threshold so he could look out the windshield and figure out what the fuck was going on.

Sure enough, the truth was there right in front of him. The flashing alarms on the dashboard, the ship spinning out of control, the huge, menacing rocks that flew by.

They’d flown straight into an asteroid belt.

His entire heart grew cold. “Fuck,” he said again, but that didn’t help, that didn’t make him feel better at all. He’d done this, he hadn’t been paying attention, he’d endangered them for no fucking reason. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Fucking hell, he was so goddamn stupid. He jumped for the controls, and his eyes moved over the buttons, the words, and suddenly it was like he couldn’t understand a single thing. Usually it was the easiest thing to do in the universe, to fly without thinking. Usually he knew where he wanted to go. His instincts had never failed him like this before. He hated it, hated it so much it made him sick. Heat tightened his lungs, pulled at his throat, pounded at the walls of his skull as he frantically moved his hands over the controls, searching, seeking something to hold onto. He needed to think about something else. Anything else.

Or maybe he should think about nothing at all.

“Matteo,” someone behind him said.

In David’s voice, his name sounded impossibly soft. Always softer than he expected, or deserved.

“What are you doing in here?” he said. The words came out in harsh, stabbing breaths. Like he was drowning, drowning in his own mistakes. Not a new feeling. Never a new feeling.

“I - I just wanted to see if I could help.”

“You can’t,” he said. ”You can’t.” Now his voice sounded faded, far away. He wondered, hazily, where it was going.

“But I want to,” David said, very quietly.

He opened his mouth to say something, and found that he couldn’t. There was no air in his lungs to shape words with. There were no thoughts inside his head to translate into language. Starbursts of color exploded in front of his eyes. Like fireworks, he thought hazily. Like something almost beautiful.

“Matteo.”

His name again. What an ugly sound.

“Matteo, can you breathe?”

Could he?

“Please?”

There was a weight on his arm, and the softest sensation against the side of his neck. A breath; and then it receded. It was a sound. It was a feeling. Someone was breathing. David was breathing. Warm, and slow, and steady. He was alive. Wasn’t he? He was still alive.

It was a small truth, but it was something. It was something and he had to hold onto it because he didn’t have anything else to hold onto. He didn’t have a choice but to listen to David’s breaths because he could hear nothing else. He didn’t have any control over his body anymore, over anything. He could feel himself breathing in, and breathing it all out. Clinging onto his own life with a desperation that almost scared him.

And somewhere inside him, deep and buried, a small voice whispered to him; and it said, maybe if he’d had the choice, he would still have chosen this.

His hands floated across the controls, the numbness fading from his fingertips, from the space between his temples. The ship steadied under them as it weaved between the floating rocks. He still wasn’t thinking, still couldn’t. Now, though, that didn’t matter. With every breath he remembered who he was again.

“There’s still a ways to go,” David said, but that thought didn’t alarm him. There was always more to go, there was never an end to the journey, and he was used to that thought. Used to the idea that he couldn’t stop paying attention, not for a second. It was his carelessness that had almost killed them, his stupidity and no one else’s. He’d had a whole lifetime to learn to accept that truth.

He thought, for a moment, that David might be expecting an answer. He didn’t provide it - couldn’t. He only had the space inside of his head for this. For surviving. Everything else faded into irrelevance as the rocks and stars sped by.

He fell into a certain rhythm, a mindless sort of motion. His eyes darted from side to side, his hands moving across the familiar controls of his ship, a wordless dance. If David said anything else he didn’t hear it. The ship dodged past aimless debris and sailed beneath a large asteroid, around a cluster of broken rocks. He twitched his fingers, flicked a number of switches, pulled gently and carefully at the helm. The ship responded to his touch like an instrument.

And suddenly, just as quickly as it had overtaken them, the asteroid belt was behind them. No more rocks in front of them, just a tiny green jewel of a planet in the distance, a sign that they had finally made it to the next system.

Matteo fell back into his seat. The exhaustion hit him all at once, with the swiftness and the ferocity of a forest fire. The exhaustion burned inside of him and left emptiness in its wake, a heaviness in his limbs that ached. Somehow he didn’t think it was the kind of feeling that would go away with sleep.

“Okay,” he said, faintly. “I think we made it out.”

“Not quite,” David said. The words came out strangely - calmer than they probably should have been.

Dread fell over Matteo once more, as if it had never left. “What do you mean?”

“Did you check the navigation system?” David said.

Matteo’s eyes flew to the navigation screen. Nothing but static.

“Shit,” he said. “Fuck.”

“So what do we do?”

Matteo dug his hands into his pockets, searching. There, half-buried in the seam of his pocket. The sharp, poky edges of his favorite trinket - a starry earring. He closed his fingers around it. The dull pain digging into the skin of his palms grounded him - brought his thoughts back into focus again.

“Look,” he said. “That planet in front of us.” They were approaching the planet rapidly, and as they came closer and closer, as the shades of green grew sharper and more pronounced, swathes of deep emerald green that covered almost the entire surface of the planet, it became more and more beautiful. And terrifying.

“So?” Again, that impossible calm, that absurd steadiness to David’s voice. As if he knew what Matteo was going to say next. As if he wanted to hear it out loud anyway.

“So we land,” Matteo said, “and I fix this goddamn ship.”

He’d wanted the words to sound strong and decisive - like he knew what he was doing. They trembled against the roof of his mouth instead. His legs were shaking, too. He was tired - so fucking tired.

Something squeezed at his shoulder. He looked down, and stared at David’s gloved hand on his upper arm. It was still there somehow. He glanced back up at David, who was looking at him. Looking at him with warmth in his eyes that glowed instead of burned.

He wanted, for a mad moment, to cover David’s hand with his own.

And then the moment passed, and David withdrew his hand. And Matteo wrapped his arms around himself, and said nothing more.

-

They landed in a vast forest so thick Matteo had the peculiar feeling that they were surrounded by dusk, though he’d seen the golden light that bathed the foliage when the ship first penetrated it. It almost felt like a miracle they’d managed to land at all. But they did, the ship setting down in a tiny clearing crowded with ferns and ivy that towered above Matteo’s head when they disembarked the ship. The first thing he noticed was the air. He let it fill his chest up to the brim, the crisp earthy scent of it lingering in the back of his throat. His whole body felt looser, somehow, less like he was suffocating and more like he was floating. Had he ever breathed in air this clean? He had so many questions he didn’t have the answer to, and that was just another one to add to the list.

David said nothing as he stepped beside Matteo and tilted his head back toward the tops of the colossal trees they could barely see. It was quiet around them aside from the rustling of leaves, a distant bird’s song; but Matteo couldn’t bring himself to feel bothered. Not right now.

“Do you think we’re the only humans on this planet?” David said, voice barely louder than a whisper.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Matteo didn’t know what was harder, looking at him or looking at anything else. “Do you want to be?”

David closed his eyes. His expression seemed so tranquil. He looked like he could belong here, if Matteo hadn’t known that he’d just stepped foot on this planet for the first time two minutes ago. Not that that was a surprise. He could probably belong anywhere if he wanted to.

“Would it be so bad?” David said. “To be the only ones?”

Matteo cast his eyes to the ground and made himself think about the question, even though he didn’t really want to. What would it be like - really, truly be like - to be the only person in the whole entire world? No one to hear him. No one to listen to. Just him, and his thoughts, and the vast and endless emptiness inside his chest. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what that was like, to perpetually choke on his own silence. He knew it every day of his fucking life.

But his ship - it was small, and warm, and safe. It had limits; it was knowable. If he was trapped inside it, at least he could see the walls that confined him. At least he could pretend he had some control over the space that drowned him. Being alone on an entire planet would be like drowning in an ocean. No matter how far he swam, he would never have a single hope of reaching the shore.

“Yeah,” Matteo said. “I think it would be.”

He didn’t know what else he could say.

David opened his eyes, and straightened his head, and looked at Matteo. The motion caught at the corner of Matteo’s eye and he turned his face to meet David’s gaze. As if he’d always found something like this easy.

“Sorry,” David said, softly.

What for? Matteo wanted to ask. What the fuck for?

The words stuck like honey to his tongue.

David looked at him for a few moments longer, expression inscrutable. The silence, now, was sharp. Nearly unbearable. Matteo’s chest could have burst with it.

At last David looked away - because, in the end, he had to be the first; Matteo didn’t have the strength, not anymore - and turned around to face the ship. “So,” he said. “What do you need to do?”

Matteo tugged at his sleeves so that they pulled over his hands. “Need to check out the hardware and see if anything needs fixing,” Matteo said. “Then try to get a signal. Might be tricky with all the trees, but once I catch the signal I can strengthen it, maybe reset the comms too.”

“If there’s civilization nearby maybe you can piggy-back off their signal,” David suggested.

Matteo frowned. “Wouldn’t that be kind of illegal?”

“Does that matter?”

Matteo snorted. “How do I keep forgetting how much of a fucking rebel you are?”

A ghost of a smile flickered on the edge of David’s mouth, almost wry. “What do you mean?”

“The night we first met you destroyed my friend’s bar and got us both into a chase by a whole horde of imperial soldiers,” Matteo reminded him.

“Oh,” David said. As if it was possible for anyone to forget something that batshit insane. “Right.”

Matteo shook his head, and turned his attention to his ship. At first glance it didn’t seem like it had weathered too much damage in the asteroid belt, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The Sparrow was a bit of an outdated model, so the comm system was external. The first step, then, was to check the antenna on the roof of the ship for significant damage, and then figure out what to do from there. It was always possible that the navigation system was down due to gravity interference from encountering a new and unfamiliar planet, though Matteo wouldn’t hold his breath. Something like that might almost be considered lucky, and he knew better than to expect good fortune from a universe like this.

Only one way forward. With a running leap he threw himself at the roof of his ship and grabbed onto the edge. He hung there for a few moments, heart pounding in his chest at the sudden exertion, before hoisting himself up with some difficulty. He landed painfully on his side and rolled over onto his back, chest heaving as he stared at the shadow-wreathed branches above his head.

“Matteo?”

Matteo crawled to the side of the roof and poked his head over the edge, peering down at David. “Yeah?”

“Do you…” David hesitated, then stretched his hand out uncertainly. “Do you want some help?”

Matteo didn’t need David’s help. He had years, a near decade of experience when it came to fixing his own fuck-ups by himself. But David had asked him a different question, and he was too tired, too weak, too selfish to lie to his face. So he leaned down and grabbed his hand, and hoisted David up.

He was careful not to hold on for longer than was necessary, to wait until the moment David was safely balanced next to him before letting go and turning away toward the ship’s antenna. He began to fiddle with it, fingers tracing along its length to search for damage. There was a sizeable dent at its base, perhaps where one of the collisions had occurred. Nothing was missing, though, at least. Messing with some of the wiring and figuring out what worked best might be enough to do the trick.

He pried the paneling loose to expose the wiring. A drop of sweat slid down his brow, into his eyes. David sat silently beside him and watched him work, his knees pulled to his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins. Matteo tried to pretend he didn’t notice. It wasn’t a very successful effort.

“Hans,” David said suddenly.

Matteo sat back on his heels and wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand. “What?”

“He was the owner of the bar we met in,” David said. “The Neon Butterfly.”

“Right,” Matteo said, still confused. He wondered what David was getting at.

“You... “ David’s eyebrows furrowed, as if in thought. “You called him a friend. But I didn’t realize you two were that close.”

Matteo’s throat closed in on itself. “We aren’t,” Matteo said.

Friends were the people who you stayed for. Who thought you were worth staying for.

And Matteo had left first.

“Really?” David was looking at him again. And this time he couldn’t pretend he didn’t see it. “Seemed like he cared about you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Matteo said.

“Why not?”

He didn’t mean it as an accusation, most likely. Matteo didn’t think David was the kind of person who would mean it that way.

Still. Matteo felt it like the sting of one. Like the quick slash of a knife across his sternum.

“I don’t have any friends,” Matteo said.

Not really. Not anymore.

“Not even me?”

It was a joke. Matteo knew it was meant to be a joke from the tilt of David’s head, the lightness in his words. But he couldn’t bring himself to laugh. He balled his hands into his fists, his nails biting into the skin of his palms.

“Will I see you again?” he heard himself saying. “After I take you to where you need to go?”

And then there was silence. Horrible, deafening silence.

He was wrong before. This was what it really felt like to drown.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean - you don’t owe me anything. I’m sorry.” He dragged both his hands through his hair, grabbing two fistfuls, pulling. The dull pain throbbed at his scalp.

Something covered both his fists. A flat and warm sort of pressure. The touch was startling enough that he opened his eyes. David was right in front of him, looking at him, gloved hands covering his hands. There was no anger in that gaze, no resentment. There was something else entirely. For once, he thought he might understand what it was.

“Matteo,” David said, “do you want to take a walk?”

Matteo nodded. Right now, he didn’t trust himself to speak.

They slid to the ground. Matteo felt a bit unsteady on his feet, touching his palm to the side of his ship to steady himself. David stood aside, watching, waiting. Matteo found himself grateful for it, somehow. He started walking, and David followed. Which was pretty nice, too. Even if Matteo didn’t know where the hell they were going.

As they walked, it seemed like the life of the forest swelled around them. The fattest beetle he’d ever seen, shining black even in the dim light, sat on a nearby leaf. A dusk-colored bird sitting on a low-hanging branch stared at them with wide, unblinking eyes. The foliage rustled, and a hare-like creature with long ears bolted across their path. It froze near a tree and twisted its head toward him. Between the two eyes he had expected to see was a third, yellow-irised and big-pupiled. He stared at it, and stared, until it ran away.

He stared at the empty space it left behind.

“I…” He inhaled deeply, shakily. “I need to ask a favor of you. If that’s okay.”

Something nudged against the back of his hand. He looked down. David had knocked his knuckles against Matteo’s, very lightly.

“What is it?” David asked, voice soft.

Matteo swallowed hard. “Tell me something,” he said. “Anything.”

If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he wasn’t begging.

“Okay,” David said evenly. “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t care,” Matteo said. It was the truth.

David was looking at him. He felt it; he knew it.

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, then,” he said.

The words sent a soft thrill down Matteo’s spine. It was exactly what he wanted to hear, and he hadn’t even known it until David said it.

At this point, he shouldn’t even be surprised.

“I’m thinking…” David tilted his head. “I’m thinking that it’s nice out here. I’ve never seen trees so tall, ever. I’m wondering if all the animals are that big, too. And where most of them are, aside from the bugs, and these night creatures. They’re living at the tops of the trees, maybe. Closer to this system’s star. I wonder what kind of world we’d find if we climbed that far.”

All of those thoughts that lived inside David’s head. There were so many of them. Matteo wanted to hold onto every goddamn word, wanted to bring them inside of himself and never let them go. Wanted to remember not just the words, but the way David shaped them with his mouth, his tongue. His voice.

It was an awful thought. Ludicrous. Humiliating, if he ever dared to say it out loud.

But he had it all the same.

“And I wonder,” David said. He bit his lip. “I wonder where you would have gone next, if we hadn’t gotten lost.”

_We_. It was Matteo’s fault, but David still used that word. As if they’d done it together.

“I’m kind of always wondering that,” David added, quietly.

Matteo’s heart felt, suddenly, as if it was too big for his chest. “Why?”

“Because,” David said, “you always seem to know where to go when you need to.”

The idea was so ridiculous Matteo almost laughed. He didn’t; he kept it inside of himself instead, where it burned like a waning fire.

“I never know that,” Matteo said.

“I think that maybe you do,” David said. “I think that maybe your heart knows, even when you think it doesn’t.”

He glanced away, then, as if abashed. Matteo wished he knew what to say to make David look at him again, but honestly he had no idea what to do with any of the words David had given him. He turned them around in his head, traced over each letter with his mind’s eye as if they might reveal to him some secret about himself. They didn’t. So they walked and said nothing, for a while.

And now Matteo was remembering other words that David had said, words that made more sense to him.

“Where I would have gone if we hadn’t gotten lost,” he said out loud.

Matteo could feel David looking at him again. Waiting.

“Have you ever been to one of those market moons?” he asked.

David shook his head. “Market moons?”

“I’d probably want to find one, if we could. Before we get to where you’re going, I mean.” Matteo chewed at his bottom lip, trying to figure out the best way to describe the image he’d conjured in his mind. “I think they’re getting rarer and rarer these days, ever since the Empire cracked down on that kind of thing, but they’re still out there if you know where to look. Once every couple months or so all these merchants go to some dinky little moon of a planet no one’s ever heard of. Sometimes in the outer rim, sometimes not. But the more remote, the better the goods.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something like that.” David’s voice sounded awed. And almost a little wistful, for some reason. “What’s it like?”

Matteo thought over it some more, trying to find the right words to do the market moons justice. “There’s always so much energy to those places,” he said. “So much variety. For a whole week everyone puts aside their guns and their grudges and they come together to make something chaotic and loud and messy. It’s fucking wonderful. The kind of things they sell there… I mean, it’s shit you’ll never see anywhere else.”

Something peculiar was happening to his face. He touched a hand to his mouth and was astonished to find himself smiling, to feel it at the corner of his lips with his own fingers.

“And what happens at the end of the week?” David asked.

Matteo’s hand dropped back down to his side. “At the end of the week they pack it all up,” he said. “And the next time, they do it all over again somewhere else.”

“That sounds incredible.” David shook his head, almost as if in wonder. “So I guess you’ve been?”

“Not recently. Might’ve changed since the last time. But it would be nice to find another one someday, I guess.” Matteo shrugged. “Used to be a big hobby of mine, trying to find out when and where the next one would be. Because they’d never say. It was always something you had to figure out on your own.”

“But you don’t do that kind of thing anymore?”

Matteo shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that question. In retrospect it seemed like an obvious choice, especially from David who never seemed to miss a single thing he said. Still, it took him another good while to figure out how to answer, and then to bring himself to say the words.

“I don’t know.” He hunched his shoulders forward, burying his hands deeper into his pockets. “Guess it was something I did as a kid, mostly. I was part of this crew who was into all these galactic mysteries, these wild ass conspiracy theories. Really big into things like the Force, but other shit, too. Like market moons. We’d go around chasing after these things and then once we found ‘em we’d hunt around for the coolest loot. I had a knack for finding the actual moons, but my co-pilot - ” He could feel himself faltering, and forced himself onward, shoved his words past the sudden lump in his throat. Now that he’d started, he found himself wanting to finish. “You could never find better shit than he did. One time he found a whole guitar - taught himself how to play it, too.”

“Wow,” David said. “Sounds like a cool guy.”

Matteo nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “He was.”

It felt strange to use the past tense for him. But the truth was, it’d been so long that Matteo didn’t know what tense to use for him anymore.

He waited, cold dread curdling in his stomach, for David to ask him more questions. Who he was talking about, maybe. What his name was. If those questions came, he wasn’t sure he would be capable of answering.

But they never did.

Instead they walked in silence. And he didn’t choke on it, or drown in it. He was grateful for it this time.

As they walked the trees around them grew thinner, less crowded. Sunlight dappled the ground they stepped on. And now they were in the thick of some of the most lush foliage Matteo had ever seen - bright green leaves that could have covered his entire face if he held them up close, orange and red flowers the size of his outstretched palms. David exclaimed in wordless delight, and Matteo’s head swiveled to see what he had seen. A blue butterfly almost as big as David’s chest, with wings that were incandescent in the sunlight, like twin jewels. Matteo’s breath caught easily in his throat.

“There’s so much life here.” David’s eyes shone with a brightness that hurt to look at directly. “It’s beautiful.”

So as it turned out they really weren’t the only ones on this planet. And that thought did make Matteo feel better, despite himself. If the darkness here was an impermanence maybe that was true in other places, too.

“You know,” David said, “it doesn’t surprise me that you were good at finding those moons.”

“It was never that hard,” Matteo mumbled, shuffling his feet.

“Still.” David smiled faintly. “I think you know more about this galaxy than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Matteo opened his mouth to say something - something stupid, probably; he didn’t know what would come out his mouth even at the best of times - but before he could, a shadow fell over them. The darkness had returned, he thought hazily for one heartstopping moment. Or maybe the sun had fallen out of the sky. Then he looked up, and he saw.

It was a monster. That was the only word that came to his head right now, in this moment. It was rearing on its hind legs, staring at them with bloodshot eyes. Reddish, matted fur. Pointed ears, a long white snout, like a fox. It snarled, its teeth gleaming menacingly in the light.

It fell forward and landed on both its front paws with a loud thump, and lunged toward David.

And Matteo didn’t think. It was like he’d fallen into a trance, the same feeling that overtook him when he piloted his ship. Like stepping in front of David and shielding him with his outstretched arms was the easiest thing in the universe to do.

The creature’s claws raked across his shoulder and his chest, ripping easily through the fabric of his shirt and scratching into his skin. He stumbled backward, skin throbbing, head filled with static. Someone cried out - was it him? His throat ached - it might have been. At the noise the creature growled, back hunched and tail flicking nervously in the air, but he barely registered the sound, barely registered anything at all. His hand had flown to his side - there was something warm and wet under his fingertips - the pounding of his heart beat through his entire body until his pulse, heavy and thick in his veins, was the only thing holding him together.

It didn’t hurt as much as it should have, he thought blurrily. So maybe dying wouldn’t hurt so much, either.

There was a pop and a sizzling sound, and then a loud rustling noise behind the creature, above its head. The noises were startling enough to pull Matteo from his dazed stupor. He squinted, trying to focus on the shape of the monster as it froze, its ears flattening against its skull. Again, the same sequence of noises, and again. It whined, a low and trembling sound in the back of its throat.

Something whistled through the air and hit against a faraway tree trunk. He didn’t know what it was. The creature didn’t seem to know, either. But when it turned its head it caught sight of something in the distance, or perhaps it thought it saw something, because when Matteo turned his head he saw nothing but leaves. The creature made another noise, a soft growl. It was going to lunge again, Matteo thought. It was going to scratch its claws deeper into his chest, the inside of him. Somehow he didn’t feel so scared at the thought. It wouldn’t be the worst pain he’d ever felt. He didn’t have to feel it to know.

In the end, though, it didn’t move in his direction. It tilted its head, instead, eyes narrowing.

And then it bolted into the trees, the foliage swallowing it whole.

Matteo blinked, uncomprehending. He turned slowly toward David. It hurt to move, to think. And so it took him a bit to register the gun in David’s outstretched hand, the fist-sized rock cradled in his other palm, to piece together what David must have done a few moments before to save his life.

“Matteo,” David said. “Are you okay?”

Matteo looked down at his body. At the long gashes across the pale skin of his chest.

“There’s blood,” he said dully.

David dropped the rock, staring at Matteo’s chest. It was then - only then - that Matteo realized how David’s hands shook, how unsteady his breathing was.

David stepped toward him. “Can I - ”

Matteo barely registered nodding before cool fingertips pressed to the inside of his wrist, and then his collarbone, and then the skin right above where his heart beat an erratic song.

“Let me help you,” David said.

It was so obvious that even Matteo couldn’t miss it. The pleading in his voice. It was the kind of thing that could move mountains, oceans, maybe even the gods themselves.

And Matteo was only a man.

-

It took a while for them to make it back to the Sparrow, mostly because of Matteo. But David was patient, and he knew the way. They hobbled up to the side of the ship, and Matteo palmed haphazardly at the entrance panel until the exit ramp began to extend. As it touched the ground he all but collapsed on it, legs sprawling out in front of him. He pinched his shirt and pulled until it extended from his chest. The rips in the fabric were long and jagged and stained with dark, wet rust. The longer he looked, the more his skin throbbed until soon it felt like his entire torso was on fire. He felt light-headed, spots of new colors swimming at the edge of his vision.

“Don’t think I can wear this shirt ever again,” Matteo said weakly.

David didn’t laugh, not that Matteo expected him to. He was hunched over the ship’s medical kit - Matteo was ridiculously proud of that thing, how much work it had taken to choose each component - frowning in concentration as he methodically sorted through its contents. “At least you can still use your arm.”

He sounded so absurdly serious that Matteo coughed out a laugh of his own. “Silver linings.” He clenched his hand into a fist, wincing. “You’re right, though. It’s just a surface wound. Not that big of a deal.” He’d certainly dealt with far worse.

“We still need to stop that bleeding, or you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Matteo swallowed. “Make sure you clean it well. Can’t imagine anything worse than these stupid things getting infected.”

“You have something for that in here? There’s… a lot.”

Back when he wasn’t the only person he needed to use that kit for, there were a lot of emergencies he’d had to be prepared for. Old habits died hard. “Yeah, check - check the front pocket,” Matteo said, head too soft around the edges to point it out properly. “All my antibiotics and disinfectants are in there.”

David let out a breath. “Okay. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, hold on.” Carefully, painstakingly, he undid the buttons of his shirt and tugged it off, breath hissing through his teeth as the fabric brushed against the wounds. Unbidden tears sprang to his eyes. “Fuck.”

David glanced up at him, gaze brushing over his chest. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “That looks… um…”

Matteo looked down at himself again. The stripes stretched from his left shoulder to the right side of his ribs. The muscles weren’t torn, at least, so that was good. But there was so much red that Matteo had to look away, his head swimming. “Looks bad,” he supplied.

“That’s a word for it,” David muttered under his breath. “Can I…”

He leaned forward, hands reaching out to hover over Matteo’s shoulder, an inch away from touching him. Matteo could feel the heat of his palms, even without the contact.

“Yeah, go for it,” he managed to choke out.

David pressed a square of gauze to his chest, holding a hand on Matteo’s shoulder to steady his touch. The pressure was gentle, but firm. Trying to stop the bleeding, it seemed. At some point he began to lose track of what was going on, exactly - only barely recognizing the feeling of a wet cloth over his skin as the blood was wiped away, bit by bit. The coolness felt so fucking good against his skin he came to, a little, alert enough to register how close David’s face was to his, the slight part of his lips, the flutter of his eyelashes as he worked. Another wave of dizziness washed over him, and he closed his eyes again.

“You’re good at this,” he said.

“I’m just doing what I have to,” David murmured.

He really was good at this, though. Matteo knew from experience that you didn’t have steady hands in the face of blood and gore without a lot of practice. It didn’t surprise him, exactly, but he couldn’t help but wonder exactly where David had gotten good at something like this, and how.

“I’m just - ” Matteo opened his eyes, looking down. He caught sight of David’s hands against his skin, and couldn’t bring himself to look away. “I’m glad I don’t have to do this alone.” The way it came out, it almost sounded like a confession.

“You know something?”

Matteo turned his gaze upward, just in time to catch the flicker of a smile at the corner of David’s mouth.

“I’m glad, too,” he said.

Matteo’s breaths were shallow, and fast.

It was the pain. It had to be the pain.

David turned away, for a moment, and returned with a bottle in his hand. He sprayed the wounds with an antibiotic, the one Matteo always used to reach for back when he’d done the same thing for others. It stung so much Matteo swore again, loudly and colorfully.

“I’m sorry,” David said. He ran his hand over Matteo’s skin, feather-light, rubbing the medicine in with his fingertips.

“It’s okay,” Matteo said. “You kind of have to.”

“Still.” The backs of David’s knuckles brushed his collarbone. “I wish it didn’t hurt you so much.”

“You’re not hurting me,” Matteo said.

It was true. The pain didn’t come from David’s hands.

David said nothing, for a while. He pressed more gauze to Matteo’s wounds, and began the long work of applying the bandages. They had to stand as he did it, Matteo’s arms stretched out and David walking around him to wrap the bandages around him tightly. Every time David walked in front of Matteo, he refused to meet his eyes. He could tell that it was a refusal and not an accident. He trusted himself to know that much.

David paused at Matteo’s side to tie a knot at his shoulder. He stepped away, and Matteo ran a hand over his ribs. It still hurt, but a dull kind of pain now, the kind of pain that could perhaps fade into the background if he didn’t think too hard about it.

“Matteo,” David said. “Can I ask you something?”

He turned his head to the side. Still, David wasn’t looking at him. “Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you - ” David’s face twisted. “Why didn’t you just push me out of the way? Or… I mean... You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to put yourself in danger like that.”

He looked - upset. That was the only word for it. Matteo didn’t think he’d ever seen him like this. Eyes on the ground, hands fidgeting aimlessly at his sides. There was this urge that pulled at him, tugged at the core of his heart, to say something. Anything, really. Anything to make David look up at him.

The truth was, though, that none of that had even occurred to Matteo. And he had the feeling, as innate as the urge to take hold of David’s chin and tilt his face up until their eyes met, that it was not something David would want to hear.

“Why does it matter?” he said instead.

David chewed his lip. The silence stretched on like a small infinity.

“I guess I just don’t like the idea of people getting hurt because of me,” he said finally.

“It wasn’t because of you,” Matteo said.

That was enough to make David meet his gaze, at last. “What?”

Matteo looked at him, into those warm brown eyes. It wasn’t too late, something in the back of his mind said. Something far away. He didn’t have to say the truth. He didn’t have to say anything at all. David would let him let it go. He always did.

But maybe he didn’t want to let it go. Not this time.

Maybe that was the same reason he’d stepped in front of David in the first place.

He lowered himself down, slowly and gingerly, until he was sitting on the entrance ramp. Telling the truth would probably take more strength than he had if he tried to stand. He waited until David was sitting, too. And then he spoke.

“I didn’t always pilot the Silver Sparrow by myself,” Matteo said. “You know that. I had my crew, and my co-pilot. There - there was Carlos, our engineer, and Abdi, our weapons master. And Jonas.”

“And you were the pilot?”

Matteo nodded. “I was the medic, too. Mostly because no one else knew how to do it.”

“But you knew how to do all that stuff,” David said. He didn’t sound surprised.

“Only because I was taught."

“By who?”

“This girl on our sister crew…”

He pulled the earring out of his pocket, and twisted it around absently with his fingers.

“I don’t know, honestly, if ‘sister crew’ is the right word for what they were,” Matteo said. “But that’s how I thought of them. Because this girl… I, um. I’d grown up with her.”

Hanna. The name came to his mind so easily. But there were some words he still couldn’t bring himself to say out loud.

“She wasn’t my sister,” he said. “But I called her my sister, because where we were from, it was hard to find people you wanted to keep, and when you did you knew they would die for you like any blood family of yours.”

“So you wanted to keep her,” David said.

“I did.” The lump in Matteo’s throat hurt more than the pain in his chest. “I swear I did. Believe me.”

The words tore up his throat as they came out. He hadn’t expected them to, hadn’t even expected to let them go so readily. But all of a sudden, this seemed like the most important thing in the universe. Even though he didn’t deserve it, even though he had no right to expect that from anyone, least of all from _him_, all of a sudden Matteo could not even bear the thought that this might be the one thing he might never have. The universe could strip all that he had away from him, he could have absolutely nothing to his name, and it wouldn’t even be anything new. But if he lost this -

If he lost _this_ -

“I do,” David said, softly. “I believe you.”

Matteo’s throat swelled. For a full second, he didn’t breathe.

“It’s just -” He stared down at his hands, hopelessly unsure what to do with them. “It’s just that - bad things happened. Bad things happened to people, and I just - I fucking stood there and let them happen.”

It didn’t make any sense. He knew it, knew he should find the words to explain, to make David understand. But he didn’t have the words; he never had. He didn’t know where to look.

“Then they left,” he continued, voice faint in his own ears, terribly, horribly inadequate. “And I didn’t do anything.”

He didn’t know how to explain that, either. That it had felt like he hadn’t had the right to. He didn’t know how it would sound out loud. He didn’t want to know.

David’s eyes were on him. He could feel it; he didn’t even have to look. It was what he’d wanted. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to meet them, in this moment.

“So maybe I just wanted to feel like I could save someone,” Matteo whispered to his hands. “Just once.”

For a long moment, no one said anything. It was just a moment, and soon it would end.

And Matteo was afraid for it to.

And then -

David got up, and walked in front of Matteo, and crouched down. And he placed one hand on either side of Matteo’s face, gentle as anything.

A tremor ran down Matteo’s aching spine. He hadn’t expected - would never even allow himself to think -

And yet here he was.

Here he fucking was.

“You saved me,” David said, quiet and sure.

And Matteo looked up at him, at his serious mouth, his serious eyes; and he thought, _You saved me, too._

The words came more easily to him than anything ever had. But he didn’t say it out loud. He closed his eyes, instead.

And David didn’t leave, not for a long while. They sat in this forest, in this world, David’s gloved hands on Matteo’s skin, Matteo’s face under David’s touch, and neither of them moved; neither of them wanted to. The silence was heavy, and then it was breathless, and then it was peace. Endless, endless peace. Like this was what their silence was always meant to be.

So maybe he didn’t have to say it, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite thing about Star Wars is that everything about it is handwaved and bullshitted which means I can do the same exact thing!
> 
> Anyway, a quick note that at the end of this month I am going abroad for a few weeks. I'm going to continue to work on this project as I can, but I just want to make sure I say this and make space for myself working on this fic because I really can't guarantee any sort of update schedule and above all I want this project to stay something fun and stress-free for me. So thank you guys for your patience and your understanding! I hope you're enjoying this so far, and I hope you enjoy what's to come =]

**Author's Note:**

> -[Tumblr](https://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com/)  
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> 
> Thank you for reading!!


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